


Synchronicity

by gyromitra



Series: FEAR!AU [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Death, Combat Violence, Definitely Body Horror, Horror Elements, How do I English?, Identity Issues, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mindscrewy, Sexual Violence Allusions, Suicidal Ideation, f.e.a.r.!AU, paranormal elements, questionable medical procedures, take your goddamn medication
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-13 01:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 27,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10503774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyromitra/pseuds/gyromitra
Summary: “What the hell is F.E.A.R.? It stands for First Encounter Assault and Recon. They're supposed to be experts on freaky shit.”For F.E.A.R. Team Two, code name Overwatch, apprehending Amelie Lacroix was supposed to be a routine soft asset recovery – simple in and out. Unfortunately for them, Talon board of directors sent after her their own elite PMC, Blackwatch.A few hours earlier F.E.A.R. Team One went silent after they had infiltrated Talon Corporate Headquarters.One nuclear detonation later, sergeant Jack Morrison, the sole survivor of the Zurich Incident, finds himself in the abandoned hospital playing a strange game of cat and mouse with both Blackwatch, and a paranormal entity called Reaper, all while trying to keep a grasp on his own slipping sanity.(A self-indulgent F.E.A.R.!AU focusing on more realistic violence/combat, horror elements, themes of mental illness including PTSD, unethical medical experimentation, and possible sexual violence – not the expected kind (absolutely no famed ‘Ghost Rape’). Also, might be a very vague songfic to Zack Hemsey’s album ‘Ronin’.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Which is to say, other characters will be added when they do impact the story.  
> Another Note: Take your prescribed medicine. If it makes you unwell, consult your doctor.

“Kill him,” the voice settles deep, the words carrying the taste of finality, and the knife slashes at his throat. The Beast’s raging roar answers and its – his – their limbs move, jerkily, not good nor fast enough, as he watches himself from the sidelines of his own mind. This is a dream, a construct of his own faulty memories, and the Beast is something he cooked up to make up for his own trauma.

Or so had the good doctors explained to him.

Now, however, the Beast seethes and recoils, the burning pain explodes under his skin, and everything drowns in dark fire as he lies in the rubble with his hand outstretched and red light filtering through the smoke, and then, between his fingers. Bloody orb in the sky wavers in the fumes. He is so utterly alone it feels like his soul had been rent in two.

He is alone when he wakes up and the Beast is something of the past. Jack raises his hand to look at the ceiling through the gaps between his stretched apart fingers and there seems to be a flicker of something elusive that disappears as soon as his eyes catch a glimpse of it.

The solace of the morning routine keeps him grounded, even more than the plethora of pills he considers briefly throwing into the trashcan – the fight renewed each day – as he stares down his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. And without them, there is something lacking, something tugging at his awareness, the presence and the memory of the Beast lingering on his tongue and behind his teeth.

Jack traces with the tip of his finger the scar dividing the face of the stranger staring back from the mirror – the scar he has no recollection of receiving – the feeling of the cool glass alien to his touch. Still, a pair of red eyes looks up at him over the reflection’s shoulder only to fade away a mere second later.

The beep of the coffeemaker snaps him out of the reverie and Jack swallows the drugs, washing them down with the tap water. Slowly, there is only him himself in the mirror and he releases his grip on the white ceramic.

Twenty minutes later the phone that is never off rings.

“Soon,” the Beast whispers against his skin and the faint lines of faded scars circling his wrists and neck burn with a sudden itch. The cold coffee carries a subtle scent of blood. “We will feast.”

His pickup arrives just as he finishes it.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will treat it also as an opportunity to shamelessly insert the lyrics from the most R76 album ever - Ronin by Zack Hemsey - because the whole album in itself reads like the fanfiction for this pairing. And of course, the coffee line had to stay in. And the whole thing will slowly alternate from the original.

_A sky red from the blood_

_Rose cheeks dull from the mud_

_Hands worn through from the sludge_

_A self no longer begrudged_

_And murder is a potion of love_

_Sacrifice devotion thereof_

_And he without sin never was_

(…)

 

The sky is on fire and the rushing clouds painted with crimson howl with agonized voices of many. Black ash clogs the air but Jack, standing among the ruins of broken concrete and twisted bodies, breathes it in with ease and familiarity, the heavy stench of death and charred meat overwhelming his senses.

This is where his life ends – this is where it starts – amidst the rubble, gore, and smoke, with the accompaniment of screams of the dying and in the world tinted red by his own blood.

Jack reaches out with his hand and through the splayed fingers he sees it leaving – the silhouette with claws dripping blood – the Beast – with shadows clinging to it like a second skin. It turns back, maw slavering black tar and burning eyes opening and closing along the glistening surface of its body.

“Aren’t you coming?”

The hiss undulates with a melody long forgotten Jack thinks he had heard before – before the Beast came into the writhing existence under his hide.

“I hear you.”

“Of course you do,” the Beast laughs, its eyes filling his vision, curious, gauging. Cruel. “I am always with you.” The darkness spreads and envelops him, a welcome respite from the memory, and the red gaze pins him in place. “But you should wake up for now…”

“Sunshine. So nice of you to join us.” Jack releases the breath caught in his throat when crimson morphs back into brown. Lena elbows Genji out of the way.

“Move away, dragon boy, I need to check his visor,” she fiddles with something and the display over his eye clears. “Okay, luv, you’re good to go.”

“Thanks,” Jack smiles, scar tissue stretching uncomfortably over his upper lip.

“Don’t mention it, luv.”

“Yeah, yeah, baby. And why the fuck are we supposed to go after that Lacroix chick?” Genji rolls his eyes, stretching. Jack sighs, closing his eyes, their APC always giving him the acute feeling of too crowded, too claustrophobic for his own liking.

“Don’t question orders. Execute them,” Winston gets up. “Lena?”

“Okay, dears, we’re going to put Amelie Lacroix, hiding out in her sweet luxurious apartment, into our custody. You know, the president of Talon corporation, and they do have their fingers in so many pies they actually run out of hands somewhere halfway through it all.”

“Protective custody,” Winston adds, “so we are all clear on the subject.”

“Boy, so this is going to be so much fun,” Genji snorts, flicking his fingers. “An escort for a spoiled rich bitch.”

“With the bloodbath that went down in Talon headquarters, which she is, as the intel indicates, tied to directly, are we expecting that much of resistance?” Hanzo mutters under his breath.

“We are doing it by the book,” Winston cuts in, irritation clear in his voice.

“Because,” Lena chirpily adds, “we think that the whole thing is some kind of power struggle inside and head honchos at Talon will try to keep her real quiet, if anything. If you know what I mean. Chop-chop quiet. Glasgow smile quie…”

“Enough, Lena,” Winston grumbles when the APC stops. “You come with me, Hanzo with Reinhardt, and you, Genji, with Jack.”

“Fuck it, why do I have to go with the fucking ray of sunshine?” Genji throws his hands up and Jack nods in rare agreement with him.

“Because you’re being a luv, as usual,” Lena giggles, jumping out. “Let’s be happy we didn’t get stuck with the corporate headquarters. They went silent after some disturbing shit,” she adds somberly, shutting the doors behind.

“Shit,” Genji rubs his temples. “If the cowboy’s silent, it’s fucking bad.”

“A canary, just like you.”

“And what the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“They sing a lot. In mines, if it stopped, it was high time to clear out of the shaft,” the feeling of wrongness intensifies when the APC lurches to a sudden stop and his HUD flickers with interference. Jack clears out of the vehicle.

“You don’t like him. We will kill him,” the Beast quips into his ear and Jack ignores it like he always does, even if it becomes harder to than any other day – the smell of blood in the air always draws it out to the surface, drugs be damned – but truth be told, he does not like anyone, maybe except Lena. Not anymore, at least.

“Maybe you’re right. Thought ever about retiring? I wouldn’t mind to live out the rest of my glorious life in one of those ‘luxurious penthouses’.” Genji laughs and Jack nods noncommittally because even if he would, they will never let him. “You’re fucking talkative today, sunshine.”

Jack just shakes his head. It’s too quiet, the air is still with anticipation, and the main entrance is well lit, but he lets his instincts guide him to the coffee shop on the side, rifle at the ready. Genji follows his lead.

“Ah, fuck, I could really go for an extra hot no-whip white chocolate macchiato. You, man?”

“Black. Straight.”

“I’m moved. You remembered,” the Beast laughs mirthlessly in the background.

*

Amelie cycles through the security feed and pauses the image.

“Would you believe our luck, doctor?”

The blonde by her side draws her brows together, recognition slowly setting on her face.

“I don’t believe in luck, ma’am.”

“Good. Because I arranged it,” Amelie smiles. It is good to see the plan coming together. There are still certain variables to be accounted for, like her dick of a husband, but he will be dealt with accordingly.

“As you did all of this, by sending the other prototype after Sombra, not to mention unsealing the Tomb,” Angela narrows her eyes. “I warned you, ma’am, that you are playing with fire.”

“Doctor, for all your ingenuity, you lack the vision. The board was too scared to take any action, but with this, with the Harbinger, we will finally have the control of Reaper.” The brunette zooms the still image. “I wonder what subject seventy-six will have to say when he meets unexpectedly with his leading physician.”

“Nothing, I believe. His conditioning should keep. His… medication is closely monitored.”

“And what will happen if we do forgo the next dosage, tell me, doctor?” Amelie inclines her head.

“The Replica programming should resurface, but seventy-six is a failed prototype.” The blonde looks away for a second. “There is no telling what state he will enter after the withdrawal.”

“Interesting. Well,” Amelie sighs happily. “Now we wait.”

“I’m sorry I don’t share your optimism, ma’am.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm adding Lena / Jack buddy-cop relationship because I'm having so much fun with it. There's a movie reference here. It's around 1k words for like 5 minutes of the game.

_(…)_

_Vivid echoes of the dream on his mind_

_This week the 3rd of its kind_

_Now his bottles of meds will conceal_

_But wounds left open are harder to be healed_

_(…)_

 

“My friends,” Reinhardt breaks the radio silence, the normally jovial man sounds somber. “There was a fatality. One of custodians had been shot in men’s restroom.”

“Point blank. Back of the head. Efficient. Clean up,” Hanzo curtly elaborates. “Hostiles in area confirmed.”

“Lobby bloody fucked up too, luvs. One down and at least another dead bugger somewhere else because it looks like someone did some fingerpainting with a bucket of bloo…”

“Enough, Lena. Genji, Jack, status?”

“Spoilsport,” Lena chuckles over the comm.

Genji looks over the counter at him and Jack lightly shakes his head, pushing open the back door with the barrel of the rifle. No one and nothing. There are stairs leading up and a seemingly cut off area going deeper into the building. Genji follows in his steps.

“Bucket of everyday cheer mimes he ain’t seen anything yet. And the fucker is considering using the fucking stairs!”

“Gate is locked anyway,” Jack fights the urge to grab his pills when the display crackles with interference, cold pinpricks of anxiety in his shoulders biting deep, and walks down the stairs he was just checking out. He jumps over the barriers to the lower level.

“Righty-o, come to the dark side, we have cookies and Lacroix’s private elevator. Though, still fighting for the bloody access to the bloody thing.”

“Lena.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Papa Winston. Go help the boys with their grand entrance.”

Jack smiles lightly at the exchange, maneuvering between the shelves, yet the unease is still there, sits rooted well in the back of his mind. Next corridor is definitely more posh and elegant, with some kind of abstract art on the walls that is probably supposed to look cheerful or uplifting but in the dim light brings back the smell of burnt meat.

“Done sightseeing?” Winston holds up the metal lattice barring the way to the lobby and waves them over. Jack ducks under it.

“Blame the ray of sunshine here.” Genji laughs. “Hell, looks nice, man, real marble floors. Not to mention I like the touch with all the blood, must’ve been nice hit to the aorta.”

“The aorta?” Hanzo narrows eyes at his brother and Jack just walks around them, to join Lena behind the counter. The receptionist lies face down on the table top, white shirt turned red – still wet and bright. “Mayhaps, it was the carotid or the subclavian artery?”

“Man, making fun of a man for his knowledge is a sign of insecurity, brother.”

“Only if that man is not a buffoon.”

“Shut your goddamn faces,” Winston scowls at the both of them as Jack runs the security footage. The military uniform is run of the mill, but the technique and the protocol of the shooter…

“We’re in deep. This is Blackwatch,” he does not know how he knows it, but he does. “Talon’s private enforcers.”

“Brings back sweet memories, doesn’t it? All the blood on our hands,” the Beast laughs into his ear and Jack shakes his head, trying to drown it out.

“Huh, so I was bloody right, that’s all bloody inside vendetta. Oh, and the elevator is on, you’re all welcome.” Lena snaps her fingers. “So we do have a straight line to Lacroix. Jackie, luv, you okay there?”

“Yeah, didn’t think I’d see…”

“See what? Your old friends? Do you wonder if any of them are still alive and kicking? Not for long,” the malicious murmur fades away, but not without the last parting shot. “We will kill them all.”

“…them in action again.” Jack finishes after the pause, with Lena observing him with a momentary flash of concern in her eyes. His files are sealed and classified but she is a curious bird that likes to know things and snoop where she should not.

“Right, luv, but about…”

“Hanzo, secure the lobby. Genji, take the stairs,” Winston takes the point by the elevator. “Rest with me.”

“The fuck, man? Stairs? I’ll die before I’ll get up there! There is, like, a bajillion of those!”

“Then hurry, luv, and catch up with us.” Lena laughs and Reinhardt nods, both taking positions on the sides. Lena hits the switch for the elevator release and Jack almost doubles in sudden pain blooming behind his eyes.

“Careful, Sunshine,” the Beast gazes at him from the corner, gone in the blink of an eye, and Jack takes a fumbling step back in pain, just out of the line of unexpected fire, the stabbing hurt leaving immediately as he brings up the rifle and shoots in unison with Lena and Winston. The uniformed man in the elevator twitches and crashes in the fountain of blood.

“I am hit,” Reinhardt mutters from his crouched position. “A flesh wound.”

“Fuck, luv, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig!” Lena moves forward but Winston holds his palm up.

“We will stabilize him, you and Morrison go after the soft asset.”

“I bloody don’t like it, Winston,” Lena voices her discontent but obeys with the order, entering the elevator after Jack.

“It is only a light scratch,” Reinhardt tries to reassure her, but she cuts him off before the doors close.

“And you’re not a bloody Black Knight, Rein!” It takes him a moment to get the reference and Jack laughs while she kneels down by the body, examining it. “Blackwatch, you say, luv? Don’t look so bloody tough now, does he?”

“It’s about the training and the protocol,” Jack turns to the panorama of the city spread below as the cabin travels upwards. The vertigo is only fleeting.

“Never knew you were one of them.” He feels the stab of anxiety deep inside, prodding at something that isn’t there.

“I wasn’t.”

“Okay, Jack, I trust you,” Lena smiles, toying with her radio. She stands up from the body and cursorily checks her gear. “Patching their frequency through, so we can listen to the bloody murderous bastards as we plow through them, what say you? Some old-fashioned fun.”

“Tactical advantage.”

“Happy killing, luv.” Lena clicks her tongue as the elevator stops and the radio comes alive.

“Everybody, listen up! We may have a problem. And I don’t like problems.” Jack freezes, cold recognition seizing him with a tremor. He knows that voice. It does not matter how, and it does not matter from when.

Gerard Lacroix.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a chopper in it. And Lena. And actually, Reaper shows in it (probably).  
> Another Note: Take your prescribed medicine. If it makes you unwell, consult your doctor.

(…)

_But one can never really leave what's behind_

_You can't undo the fate you've designed_

_Cover up the tracks and bloodhounds will find_

_Cuz all debts owed get paid in due time_

(…)

 

“And if anyone wastes that whore of my wife, I will personally put a bullet between their eyes, because they want the bitch alive.” Gerard continues on the radio as Jack and Lena sprint out of the elevator, behind cover, and start shooting.

“I love the smell of cordite in the morning,” Lena laughs over the sounds of gunfire when they make their way to the patio under the open sky. There is even a Jacuzzi, but the warranty may be void with the perforated body swimming in it now.

“Too much television,” Jack grunts, reloading. One of the wounded is screaming, it fades to a gurgle in few seconds.

“You say it like it’s a bad thing, luv, still managed to waste the one on the balcony you’ve missed.”

“I did not miss him, I left him for you.”

“Oh, you men, and your bloody fragile egos.” Lena moves with her rifle at the ready. “Fuck, this place is bloody big, perks of the six-zero salary. You go left, I sweep right, Jackie-boy?”

“We’ve got boogies, military.” The radio comes alive again.

“They could be Marie fucking Antoinette for all I care,” Gerard’s voice brings up seething hate in his mind and Jack curls up his lip involuntarily. “Light them up. And where is the fucking chopper?”

“I’m guessing you and him have a history,” Lena creeps up the stairs, sparing him a short glance when she stops with her hand on a wooden finish of the wall miraculously spared from the bullets.

“We don’t. He’s a butcher.” Jack ducks under the metal lattice again. “See you on the other side.”

“Men,” Lena mutters on the off but the tone carries a hint of smile. “Anything comes up, I’ll be sure to holler,” the radio cackles with short electrical whine. “Bloody over, luv.”

The corridor is empty and quiet – swept through already – save for the body in staff uniform he steps over, a testament to Blackwatch passing: a civilian, executed kneeling down with one bullet to the back of the head.

“No witnesses, only charred bones and black ash,” the Beast purrs satisfied, claws clicking on the marble floor accompanying each of his steps as Jack rounds the corner and creeps along the wall. The glass gallery on the other side of the passageway starts to buzz with vibrations. “Run, Sunshine.”

Jack throws himself forward and then to the right, just as high caliber rounds shatter glass and almost literally cleave a hole in the wall where he has been standing a moment earlier. He feels one bullet scrape and rip the outer back layer of his combat armor. The chopper turns and the canyon of exploded plaster follows Jack sprinting and then hurling himself down the stairs to the inside part of the apartment. He does not stop and barrels through the double doors in front of him using the gained momentum – a grave mistake any other time, but now the surprise gives him an upper hand.

Jack idly wonders who ate from the platters and who used all the porcelain; relics exhibited in the showroom break under the hail of bullets. Recoil bites into his shoulder until the cartridge empties. He ducks behind the pillar and unclasps a flashbang from his belt, tears the pin with his thumb and counts to two, then gently bumps it behind. The shout from one of the combatants as it lands signals him to release the spent magazine and force in a new one. The mechanism clicks and the room floods with light, his earpieces nullifying the bang – the soundwave still resonating in his chest.

Dealing with disoriented enemies takes scant seconds. Jack crosses the room towards the one that still lives. The man tries to crawl away, one hand holding his ripped side, fear of death and pain clearly painted on his face.

Jack kicks him and then holds him in place with foot pressed down on his chest – the barrel of the rifle slowly lowering to the sound of terrified whimpers and stopping only when pointed at the man’s head. He pulls the trigger and holds it a little longer than needed.

Killing humans is easy.

“Yes,” the Beast hisses into his ear. “They will all die. We will bathe in their screams.”

“Yes,” Jack answers back, glancing at the painting on the wall next to him. It does not fit the abstract pieces adorning the walls. The dark cloud swirling around the tree (the tree somehow painfully familiar) looks as if alive, droplets of splattered blood sinking into the thirsting paint and drying up almost instantly.

He briefly shakes his head and moves forward, keeping a wary eye on the windows. The next connecting corridor leads into an indoor swimming pool, the sliding roof shut tight. But the water… The pool is filled to the brim with blood, dark and still, the wet smell of iron in the air inimitable, and the headache making his vision waver is back.

Crazy or not, he is not stepping into it. Jack follows the path along the edge, ready to shove the stacked furniture blocking the way when something grips his ankle. The hand with pointed dark claws, weathered and wrinkled like a mummy on display, yanks hard. He has time only to close his eyes and take a breath as he plunges into the crimson liquid.

The darkness is calm and comforting, the presence in it pulsing with a soft hum. Foreign touch slowly travels down his scar as everywhere around Jack disembodied red eyes open and curiously stare at him.

“Dead, am I?” It, the Beast or something else altogether, whispers, chuckling. Then the aura changes suddenly and the presence becomes oppressing, claws dig deep into his throat. “Are you even in there?” It snarls.

“I hear you,” Jack chokes out and the pressure on his throat leaves reluctantly as red eyes close one by one.

The plastic bottle slips away from his fingers into the water when he recovers standing by the edge of the pool, the white pills floating on the surface, some of them already slowly sinking to the bottom. The piled chairs from before are thrown everywhere around.

“Shit,” Jack grips his rifle, moving forward. There are bloody footprints leading from the pool up the stairs. Crazy or not…

“You saying something, luv?” Lena pipes up on the radio. “I’m not running into many of those bloody twats.”

“Yeah, almost empty. You think they all went for sunshine?” Genji laughs. “Let me tell you, how do you even have that many fucking stairs?”

“Keep away from open spaces and windows. They have a chopper with vulcan on it.”

“Oi, luv, you okay? Bad whirlybird not hurt you much?”

“No,” the door opens with a soft click to a carpeted corridor, the footprints continuing forward. “Back armor’s shot though. Would be nice to have someone make sure I don’t get nailed from behind.”

“An innuendo!” Lena giggles. “Don’t worry, luv, almost on it. I think.”

There are voices coming from the front.

“Over, boogies,” Jack whispers into the receiver and hugs the wall. He will only have one flashbang left, but the conversation carries as they stand guard, and he cooks it for three seconds now. The grenade explodes in the air and Jack moves from behind the cover, shooting. Only two targets. The clip is half-full. The bloody footprints unnerve him – still, he follows them to the empty bedroom with a television set displaying the images from the security feed.

The pain is back and Jack can only stare at the dark figure passing him in the doorway, black wisps of smoke breaking away from it and then drifting into nothingness, yet the shine on the black coat brings to the mind an idea of wetness. It stops by the shelf and taps a clawed finger on an old music box, then dissipates, taking away the headache with its presence gone.

Crazy or not. Jack starts the mechanism – it’s a melody he thinks he should know but does not remember. The shelf moves to the side.

A panic room.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the actual story starts here? And, welp, Reaper.  
> Another Note: Take your prescribed medicine. If it makes you unwell, consult your doctor.

_(…)_

_This a tale of a cautionary kind_

_This a story of that Icarus design_

_This a message from the hanged man's twine_

_This when mother nature rips apart the fault lines_

_(…)_

 

Jack can’t help the feeling the whole set up on the wall is a presentation of sorts, the newspaper clips, the pictures, the code lists – amino-acid sequences, something forgotten whispers in the back of his mind – and on the right there he is himself as he stares at the personnel file photographs of his own unit, and then some more. He recognizes McCree and the rest, but the one odd picture has him pause and trace fingers against it as he passes it.

“Sergeant Morrison, a sight for sore eyes,” Amelie Lacroix, waiting for him by the door, is a type of woman that makes it impossible to tell her age. She is long past her youth either way, but still exudes the sense of authority and power tugging at something primal. It screams danger as Jack shakes her hand briefly wondering why is she claiming such familiarity. “I know you’ve been assigned as my escort but now we have a much more grave matter to attend,” she leads him inside. The panic room is more than what it looks like at a first sight – a veritable command center. Jack notes the other person there, a woman too, bent over one of the consoles. “As you are probably aware, there was an incident at our headquarters, which prompted your deployment actually.”

Amelie smiles, her eyes searching his face. Jack nods even when the threatening feeling crawls up his spine, cold spilling over his shoulders.

“We aren’t privy to the details.”

“I believe so. One of our employees came, somehow, into contact with a weaponized entity referred to as Reaper. She took control of our internal prototype line and begun her little uprising.”

“It’s a pretty way of describing the fact that the whole staff was wiped out.” The blonde straightens out and picks up her bag from the floor, still with her back to them. “Please also include the information that this conversation, on the whole, is top secret since the projects in question are being developed for the sole use of the military, ma’am.”

“Ever dutiful, Angela. All in due order,” Lacroix clicks her tongue. “This is my current associate, doctor Ziegler, our head researcher, and I don’t think I have to stress the need to keep her healthy and intact through the whole ordeal with my husband. A butcher, I believe, you called him.”

Jack starts. Their communication channel should be secure and no one should have the access to it, except the command on supervised deployments – this one was urgent, but still off the real-time control as was indicated in the debriefing. The implications of her words are more than highly unpleasant.

“Ma’am,” Angela moves closer, pointing with her chin one of the screens but Jack tear his gaze away from her. Something screams at him to run, the Beast hisses drowning out the hum of the machines in the room. “I think the worst case scenario just became reality.”

“Ah. It seems your associate just opened the Tomb. Agent McCree, if I’m not mistaken?” Jack forces himself to look at the video feed. On the screen, Jesse backs from the console as a black cloud washes over him. “Reaper. A sight to behold…”

The unnatural rumble accompanying the spasm of urgent pain behind his eyes obscures his vision, gnarled dark growth crushes the walls and penetrates screens and computers. Both women disappear in slowly drifting black ash as Jack stumbles back and out, stopping only to gag on the bile rising in his throat. He almost trips on the stairs trying blindly to escape this something that hooks into his mind and attempts to shred it apart.

He sinks to his knees before the window, the city sprawling below peaceful and oblivious as the sky changes from dark blue to crimson with a broken howl of thousands ripped from their bodies. The black silhouette cut starkly against the fiery inferno reaching towards the heavens turns to him, sunken red eyes set in the dead face.

Reaper comes closer, the claws reach out and touch his cheek. Jack feels the tickling droplets of blood flow from his nose.

“Always rushing in, Sunshine.” The glass panes hit by the blast wave explode in deadly shrapnel, someone is screaming on the radio, yet he can only focus on the creature standing there, on the touch, on the overwhelming pain threatening to crush his skull.

Jack topples back as the black ash clogs the air.

*

The grass swaying in the gentle breeze grows over the smoking rubble. The place carries a deep sense of belonging, yet there is something unsettling in the red orb that hides behind the clouds. The tree in the distance is old and weathered, the Beast waiting in its shade, but now…

Now there is a hospital bed between them, the cuffs hanging off the rail – not the kind used to restrain and not hurt.

“You are going to get better, do you hear me?”

Jack blinks. The gurney is now lying on its side, blood soaking through the mattress.

“What the fuck have you done to him?”

“Is this something that happened?” Jack asks but the Beast only laughs hysterically.

*

When he comes to on an operating table, Jack feels this certain sort of detachment that comes with forgotten or thrown away pills – little white nondescript shapes dropped to the floor or in the trash, spat out or thrown up. The calm washes over him with the thundering hum of blood rushing through his veins with every beat of heart even when distant panic surges his body to struggle against the bindings and he is dimly aware of the lines on his wrists and neck burning.

“He’s awake!” One of the monsters hovering over him, with skin slowly melting and sloughing off its bones, turns towards the gallery.

“And we have too little time for your shows of pretend empathy, doctor. Do continue.” Amelie coldly states, observing, face illuminated by hues of white.

The scalpel touches his sternum, sinks into the flesh, and then moves down, splitting the skin, fat, and muscle. He is screaming, yet it hardly registers in his mind because the Beast is here, its forehead pressing into his own as if it is trying to bleed its darkness into him.

“He’s going into cardiac,” one of the creatures tearing into his body with macabre tools mentions. “Give him two hundred for a start.”

“You’re dying. They’re killing you.” The Beast growls, black tendrils undulating under the halogen lights, its rage unconcealed and rolling over him in waves.

The discrepancy between what is happening and what he feels makes Jack smile. They don’t see the Beast, the monsters are oblivious to the bigger monster among them, and moist blackness is so familiar and comforting he would laugh if there was any air left in his lungs.

“You have to let me in, Sunshine,” the Beast almost pleads now and Jack – Jack embraces it – that part of himself that wants nothing more than to rip, tear and shred, and then bathe in the spilled blood and gorge itself on still steaming entrails.

The other suffocating presence in the room, this something – someone – combs his hair with sharp claws, soothing, caring, burning, and the Beast purrs in contentment.

“Kill them all, Sunshine.”

“We have a spike on… Shit!” The restraints snap and Jack crushes brittle throat of the first monster between his fingers. It yields with ease, mushy and sticky, the juices dripping down his arm.

“Spectacular,” Amelie smiles, her eyes drinking in every minute detail of the massacre taking place before her. “Imagine, doctor, our new product line made with this. The possibilities.”

“I feel obliged, ma’am, to tell you this is an exceptionally bad idea.” Angela crosses her arms over her chest.

“But you will do this, in the name of science.” Below, Jack stops and slowly turns towards them, his fingers twitching spasmodically, with scraps of bloodied flesh clinging to his skin. He snarls and takes a running start, throwing himself at the reinforced glass separating him from the gallery. “So pretty, so vicious,” Amelie laughs at another attempt. “Switch him off and make sure we will have samples to cultivate later. There are other subjects to prime.”

Angela keys the sequence into the console. Jack stills, wavering on his legs, head lolling slightly, a bubble of bloody saliva on his lips, and then he falls to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, into darkness, guided home by a melody he might have heard before – his flesh sealed and skin unbroken.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seriously take your medication. And none are without blame.

_(…)_

_Then he awoke with a cough and a heave_

_His heart pound like cannons in mid siege_

_Vivid echoes of his terrified screams_

_Guess nothing ever just is what it seems_

_(…)_

 

Jack wakes up in a hospital bed with a start, few fragmented flashes clinging to his memory, but more importantly, there is something where there was nothing for so long. A sense of purpose hits him with a realization that almost sends him falling to the floor, and he grips the edge of the mattress with desperate strength. It takes him several breaths to orientate and ground.

The room is no different than any other hospital room he was ever in. The tv in the corner displays the emergency broadcast. All is too quiet – no hum of the machines, no signs of human life. There is something wrong with the sky visible through the windows.

He is wearing his fatigues but no armor jacket, no weapons, all stripped, yet in the side pocket there is a white plastic bottle that rattles when he checks it. Jack swallows when he unscrews the lid and slowly spreads the pills on his palm. Four. He should take four with the missed dose.

“You know what to do, Sunshine,” the whisper gives him the nudge, and the Beast rests its jaws on his shoulder as he lets the white pills fall with the clatter to the ground. He steps on them for a good measure while feeling his throat constrict. Crazy or not. “Good,” the Beast murmurs almost affectionately.

On the little cupboard lies his visor and Jack snatches it and puts in on in one move, waits for the system to boot.

“This is bollocks,” Lena groans between the crackle of the interference. “Can someone hear me, lads? Everything’s blocked and bloody barricaded.”

“Morrison checking in,” Jack answers at the same moment as he hears Winston confirm. “We need to meet up.”

“Bloody right. Oxton out.”

Jack moves forward cautiously, the next room is in far worse state than the one he had awoken in. The place looks abandoned and almost ransacked, the papers – medical charts – and furniture thrown about as if someone was trying to leave this place in a hurry.

He creeps along the corridor, taking note of the total absence of sounds signifying anyone’s presence – there is only his own breath, the squeak of his soles on the waxed floors and crinkle of fabric as he moves forward.

Spraypainted red cross on the wall catches his attention with its familiarity. A calling card that freezes his insides. Jack takes a step back, his thoughts spinning in a dizzy torrent threatening to take him with it. A Blackwatch purge, they are all in the middle of a Blackwatch purge, and this is no accident, can’t be an accident, he knows that.

Blackwatch leaves no survivors, no evidence, only ashes. He wants to call up Lena but now, now he can’t really afford to give his position because there is at present a group of bloodthirsty murderers after Lacroix – after them – and they are going to kill everyone and burn this place down to the ground.

He is unarmed. He is panicking. He should have taken the damn pills, because when he turns there is a tall figure made out of shadows, staring at him with piercing red eyes glowing in the darkness.

“Don’t play coy now, Sunshine,” the Beast speaks softly into his ear as the shape dissolves in wisps of drifting ash under the flickering lamp. “We will kill them all. We will drink their blood. We will bury our hands in their steaming entrails.”

“Yes,” Jack answers out of habit, calming himself forcefully, and presses forward, eerie stillness in the air raising hair on the back of his head. He passes another cross on the wall, avoids looking at it and focuses on the bullet holes in the plaster and a pool of smeared blood – no body even if anyone who bled that much wouldn’t be walking away from it.

“Scalpel on the left,” dark hiss informs him and Jack swipes it on the way. The blade scrapes his skin on touch when he climbs the stairs following another trail of crimson, nervous twitch of his fingers not stopping, getting stronger even with each step.

There is a corpse, still warm, leaning over the railing, at the top of the stairs. On the left, the passage is blocked by a makeshift barricade. Bloody footprints lead to the right, to bathrooms, the door ajar, and the sound of whistling carries from inside.

“Remember your training,” the Beast admonishes him and Jack slips through the gap, hands now steady, and stalks toward the open stall, crouched slightly, teeth bared behind curled up lip. He grabs the man, left hand over his mouth and nose – the scalpel cuts through the flesh effortlessly. Jack holds him until the shudders subside and then lowers the body slowly down to the ground. “You did good.”

He feels nothing. Killing humans is easy.

He quickly strips the man out of bloodied jacket and throws it on, the smell of iron pervasive in the air now more than ever, and secures it on his side, fingers ghosting over combat knife pinned on the left. The rifle is empty, no spare ammunition on the body, so he shoulders it, but the Seegert pistol has one additional clip and the loaded magazine is almost full. It’s not much. It will have to be enough.

Jack pats the body down in search of some sort of identification – there is none like he suspected, but the open pack of cigarettes and the lighter are a welcome find. He puts one between his lips and freezes with the flame millimeters away from it.

He has never smoked.

He can’t smoke, not with the medication… With trembling fingers, Jack pockets the lighter, the pack of cigarettes joining it second later, and gets up. The next stall is open too.

“I’m sorry,” Jack whispers to the nurse curled up inside by the toilet bowl, one hand lying palm up on the tiles, the other raised – tangled in her curly hair as if still protecting her head. She had run inside to seek shelter, to hide, but they found her anyway.

“Don’t be,” the Beast spits it out like a curse. “None are blameless in here.”

He stumbles out of the bathroom holding back of his hand against his lips to try and squash the feeling of nausea, it takes several breaths through the nose to regain any facade of stability. It does not help that the furniture blocking the passage is now crushed and broken, ripped apart and strewn around.

Crazy or not, Jack repeats his little mantra.

Past the doors he steps into a completely different place - a hospital no more. The smell of anesthetics still lingers, now undercut with something more acidic and biting, burning wood and plastic.

Over the desks, another red cross marks the wall and all the computers are destroyed – shot from close distance – with several bodies strewn around on the floor. Jack cautiously steps around them, away from blood, his palm sweaty around the pistol’s grip and chest constricting with uneasiness. Each breath is somehow hard to draw.

“A godsend, sergeant Morrison,” Lacroix calls to him from the other side of metal bars dividing the space into a makeshift corridor. Her sidearm is drawn but lowered down.

“Kill,” the Beast seethes and claws at his mind. Jack tries to ignore it.

“Since my poor excuse of a husband wants to erase us all at the moment,” she continues without missing a beat, “I need you in our T.A.C. lab stat. This is crucial.”

“Where is it?”

“I believe that if you follow your current path you will find it,” Lacroix points him to the doors. “Just past the reception area. Regretfully, doctor Ziegler and I became separated, so if you run into her, please do escort her. She is, after all, extremely valuable.”

“No, no, no,” the Beast screams. “We will tear her apart.”

“I will try to remember.” Jack fights the impulse to bring up the pistol and aim it at Lacroix as she passes him. Before she disappears from his field of vision, she turns one last time.

“Did you take your medication, sergeant Morrison?”

“Yes.” The question somehow does not surprise him and he answers holding her gaze as she nods.

“Good. Wouldn’t want you dropping dead on us suddenly,” she laughs haughtily as she walks away. Jack waits for the sound of her heels to die down before he moves again. He is now sure of only one thing – she cannot be trusted. Even if the reception is just right where she said it is.

The tv over the counter works and is tuned into a newscast, showing stills of the mushroom cloud towering over the devastated area. Jack catches the bit about the estimated death toll in thousands and the National Guard moving in to help deal with the disaster, but what captures his attention is the time displayed in the corner of the screen.

Twenty-seven past ten in the evening. Suddenly it all makes sense: the interference, the sky, the layout. This is no hospital at all, this is an underground research facility.

When the ice cold touch moves down his spine, Jack brings his fingers to face and then stares transfixed at bright blood smeared on them. Pain sinks him to his knees.

Claws cover his eyes from behind.

“Hadn’t I already told you, Sunshine, that none are blameless here?” A different voice fills his ears.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take your medication, yadda yadda yadda. Action sequences, who needs them?

_(…)_

_Now a changing of the guard has begun_

_A kingdom that belies the internal_

_Is a prison of the mind that's infernal_

_And eternal is the lie turned plague_

_(…)_

 

The time on the screen is now forty-five past ten as Jack huddles behind the counter and scrapes off the caked flaking blood from his nose, the itch unbearable. He lost a quarter of an hour. He should have taken the meds, the attacks, three if he remembers them, take time from him, and luckily he has not been found during this episode. He could go back and try to scrounge something from the remains of the crushed pills, but the idea has him almost giggling desperately.

Instead, he reaches into his pocket for a cigarette. This time he lights it and the smoke scratches his throat in a strangely familiar way, the nicotine dizziness and elation pass fast, leaving him shivering.

“Brings back memories, doesn’t it,” the Beast, amused, sits by him, the ever-present shadow of himself.

“I have no idea,” Jack shrugs. “I don’t smoke.”

“I guess you don’t,” the Beast purrs in contentment, fangs nipping at his neck dangerously. Jack puts the cigarette out on the floor. “Any plans, Sunshine?”

“Forward.” It grows quiet after that and he pulls himself up, muscles trembling with exertion as he grips the countertop to stabilize himself. First few steps are harder than they should be, stiff and painful, and Jack takes a deep breath before he pushes to the next room – a corridor really – which looks more like a maintenance area with fenced off pipes lining the wall, the hum of electrical machinery strangely discomforting.

Muffled sounds of shots fired and screams send his senses into a frenzy, his grip on the pistol grows strained as he creeps further, only to stop at the turn, his instinct trying to keep him back. But he cannot allow himself to stay and wait it all out, he has to survive and get out. The purpose that he does not understand spurs him to move and round the corner.

A nurse pummels on the reinforced glass trying to get his attention like he could do something – anything really – seconds before his face becomes a gore show of exit wounds splattered against the transparent surface and then, he slides down leaving bloody smears with bits of bone and white brain matter. Jack observes, the strangely empty feeling unfurling in his mind as if he were just standing beside himself. None are blameless here.

“Boss, you won’t believe whom I just run into.” The voice snaps his head to its source, eyes widening in recognition. Mako Rutledge. Surging panic stops him in place and he can’t breathe suddenly because there is a hand at his throat... “Fucking Morrison.”

“See, Sunshine? All our old friends,” the Beast hisses into his ear, the ghost of touch moves along his jaw and lips, thumb pressing hard to demand his urgent concentration, but he cannot breathe, cannot focus on anything other than the man on the other side of the bloodstained glass smirking at him knowingly.

“Yeah. I just might know how to cut him off,” Rutledge heads for the exit. “You want him rare or done?”

“Remember your training. You can still outrun him, Sunshine.” The Beast whispers and Jack unfreezes, the sudden jolt of his muscles almost hurting, a jump, each step. He takes off, dashing through the meandering corridors and crashing through fence gates.

Rutledge is big. Doesn’t care for collateral. Close quarters is his forte. In hand to hand, he is going to be severely disadvantaged. Jack needs to put distance between them and think up a plan to deal with the situation. To deal with the unexplainable fear churning in his gut at the mere sight of the man.

More so, he realizes, when the hot air almost dries up his throat and billowing smoke threatens to close up his airways, just past the first sealed doors. Because where Rutledge is, Fawkes and his personal brand of destruction are not far behind.

He rushes through the burning room, heat singing his hair. The next are has nothing to burn and Jack takes a big thankful gulp of air. The crack of the radio has him pushing against the wall when the display shows unknown caller id.

“Jack, you are going into an ambush,” the heavily modulated voice cuts in.

“Who the bloody fuck are you!? This is a secure channel…”

“Lena,” Jack asks and she grows quiet but her displeasure carries with an irritated click of a tongue. “Is Rutledge there?”

“He took a different path, to meet up with Lacroix, it seems,” the person on the other side answers after some consideration. “I don’t have the command frequency code.”

“Fawkes?”

“With Lacroix at the moment. The room you’re going into is the internal foyer of the right research facility. There is a guard desk on the left by the entrance. There are four boogies in at the moment, two on the left by the exit, two just in the front. Standard gear.”

“Do they have the video feed?” Jack checks the Seegert again, counting bullets, just to be sure.

“I cut them off.” So they do not know where anyone exactly is or how many of them are here, surviving so far. It’s him, Lena, and possibly still Winston. Others unaccounted for. They only know what path he is going to take. It’s something, at least.

“Roger that.”

Jack steadies himself, calming breaths slow, and reaches inside for that something that will not let him die, the Beast at his fingertips purring and taking over.

“Remember your training,” it murmurs when the doors crash open. The first two shots find their targets with terrifying accuracy but he does not stop and turns left, vaulting over the desk. The grenade passes him in the air and lands behind the counter where he was a scant second earlier.

The other of the two remaining enemies starts firing only now but his aim is low. Too low. Another two shots take care of the situation and then Jack falls flat to the ground. The explosion shakes the room and glass dividers shatter with the soundwave. Concussion grenade.

They were not trying to kill him, they were trying to incapacitate him. He doesn’t know if that thought eases him in any way as he scrambles up. But it is an advantage he will have to press.

“Glad to see you hadn’t rusted, Morrison.”

“Jack, you good?” Lena whispers as he takes the rifle clips off the bodies and reloads the one he has on his shoulder. He finds two more grenades.

“Positive. Replenished the arsenal.”

“Okay, who the bloody…”

“You can call me Shrike.” The voice on the other side stops her mid-sentence. “You’re in the clear for now, Jack. Left through the another hospital hub security area is your best bet to elevators and T.A.C. – there are three Blackwatch and a worker barricaded inside.”

He grunts in answer, the weight of the rifle in his hands now giving him some semblance of security.

“Shrike? You stop bollocking us right now, because…”

“Child,” the voice is more amused than angry. “The Shrike is based off me. Patching the lock.” The light by the keycard reader turns green and the strengthened door slides open.

“And you just so happen to know Jack, bloody brilliant if you expect me to believe this to boot…”

“I don’t know him, girl. I used to.”

“Jack, luv?”

“I have no idea, but she is helping.” Jack steps through. Shrike chuckles on the line.

“She? The Shrike is a bloke!”

“Don’t believe everything you see on the telly. How’s your medication, Jack, by the way?”

“Ditched it,” the impulse to lie is not there, not now, and he can imagine Shrike nodding with approval on the other side of the comm even if Lena reproachfully mutters some curse.

“Any withdrawal symptoms so far?”

“Hell if I know. I’m hallucinating like crazy, but it started on the dosage.” The place is again eerily empty, the red crosses on the walls don’t bother him that much anymore but the sporadic clusters of gray ash he makes sure not to step in out of some inner inexplicable conviction shake him to the core.

“It’s going to get worse with Reaper around. It induces psychic shock only with proximity.” It. Calling Reaper ‘it’ feels inherently wrong and Jack clenches his teeth, faltering in his stride for a second. “Next turn will have you above the hub. They are rigging explosives to blow the security area open. There’s something I have to take care of, if anything comes up I will contact you again.”

“I’m moved by your concern, Sunshine, really,” the Beast mocks him with a lurking undertone of fondness.

“Bloody hogwash, all this shit,” Lena spats out. “What’s this business with your meds?”

“They weren’t helping. The Beast doesn’t like them.” She falls silent for a while. “I have the episodes already but I’m managing.”

“Jack, luv, you read about thirty meters below me.” She is concerned. He doesn’t want her to be. Crazy or not, he is dealing. Somehow, badly, but he is dealing with it. “We will get this mess sorted out. Call me if you need, you know… Oxton out.”

He stops above the security room, ever so helpfully labeled literally with a big sign over the secluded area in the bigger hall. The set up does not belong in a hospital and would be strange and suspicious if he had not known what he does know now. One of the agents below knocks on the glass.

“Ma’am, there was a break out in specimen containment. We are evacuating everybody.” Jack crouches down and braces the rifle against his shoulder, preparing for the recoil.

“No! Leave me alone! I’m safe in here!” The woman inside screams back at him. The one setting up the charge moves back and shows the okay sign. Jack holds his breath and aims.

“Steady now, Sunshine,” the Beast chides him.

“I know,” he pulls the trigger and holds it until the magazine empties. Splattered blood brings an intense sense of satisfaction he isn’t sure is his own that flows through his mind. He jumps down and rolls on the floor, turning towards the secure area, sudden pain stabbing just behind his eyes.

Inside, through the window, he can see the woman, now frozen in the motion of backing off towards the wall, her skin graying rapidly and changing the texture. There is something – someone – standing before her, dark claw touching her forehead, but the red glowing eyes of the black figure with decaying flesh in place of a face focus on him.

There is a flick of a finger and the woman’s form crumples into gray ash, slowly falling apart, parts drifting off on an invisible air current.

“I see you,” Jack, with the Beast crowding his back, whispers weakly.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foreshadowing, and more foreshadowing. I love the morgue setpiece and building upon it was wonderful :) You know you can get double body freezer for about $6k?

_(…)_

_So I've dug this grave so my truth won't fade_

_I feel the war paint on my face_

_I feel the ground tremble and quake_

_I feel my heart sync to the pace that these war drums make_

_I feel alive and awake_

_(…)_

 

With each step tall grass tickles his palms as he walks towards the old gnarled tree but the distance does not diminish. The dark shape that sits by it, back leaning against the trunk, turns its head away from him.

“Got a job offer.”

“And what did you say?”

“Not without you.”

The laughter carries in the air as a different shade flickers into existence by the first one’s side.

“And what did they say?”

“They pulled up your file and said yes.”

The touch sliding down his arm is almost shy – hesitant – and with growing dread Jack turns to face it – him – the Reaper. The sky above slowly darkens and turns crimson. He is pinned down by the red eyes set in a face that cannot hold its shape as it dissolves and reforms with every tick of an invisible clock, skin and muscle decaying and regenerating in a loop with bits of yellowish bone peeking for a moment from underneath between the cycles.

“Those aren’t mine,” Jack whispers and there is a flicker of something in that face, in the set of jaws, in how the touch changes into an iron grip of claws sinking into his arm. “Why are you showing me this?”

It’s anger, he realizes, when a guttural roar drowns everything around. The flash of pain brings him to reality and Jack finds himself in the elevator, the numbers on the display growing slowly until it suddenly shudders with a groan of machinery and stops between the floors. Something hits hard on the outside of the shaft.

“Let’s get this bitch cracked open, boss wants what’s inside.” With a screech of protesting metal, the doors are forced apart and he is ready to open fire and strike out like a caged animal when the screams start. Through the pried open gap he can see something long-limbed surging forward with a growl, the shape alarmingly human and yet its form twisted enough to induce a feeling of sheer wrongness of this passing monstrosity leaving bloody tracks and chunks of meat in its wake.

“Down, Sunshine. The maintenance duct,” the Beast instructs and Jack won’t question. He kicks and braces himself, widening the gap enough to slip down outside the elevator into the tight low corridor, just in time to hear something heavy land on its roof. The cabin shakes as something, snarling sporadically, paces on top of it “Don’t stop now.”

No, he cannot stop, as he pauses by the grating and kicks it out, screws ripped out with chunks of plaster still attached, and slips into a cold room, ceramic tiles covering the walls and floor. How fucking big is this fucking place?

Fluorescent lights above are dimmed, broken, or flickering, the chill in the air disconcerting. With another step, Jack stops before he puts his weight down because with a sudden flare of one of the lamps the tiles are now gratuitously painted with fresh blood, splatters wide and wild. Slashing sprays. No bodies. Unless he counts the one in the body bag lying on the extended out slab of the burning furnace, and further down the corridor another one on the gurney the shadowy figure leans over. Crazy or not, Jack repeats soundlessly. He takes a deep breath and follows.

Reaper disappears behind the corner, passing through space as if the reality is a dated vinyl that comes to a screeching halt under the needle and then, skips forward with accumulated momentum.

The lights go out with a wail and reignite. He stands opposite of the wall of freezers. Grating squeal and furious banging assaults his senses as all of them fly open simultaneously, some even torn from their hinges by an unseen force.

One rack slides out slowly, the body bag occupied, and Jack knows he should turn back, go away, escape, but something urges him on, and with trepidation pulsing under his skin, he reaches out, gripping the zipper with trembling fingers. The catches bump and hiss as he slides it down, each tick sounding more like a beat of a bell in expectant silence.

The obvious sheen of death in half-closed eyes, the way the skin turns waxy to the sight, he is familiar with this all. The body has been washed. The cut on the lips is healed, but the one stretching across the face stares at him angrily, raw and faded red of oxidized meat, in places showing white of the bone where the blade had obviously cut through all the muscle. The throat is almost torn open, the entry wound a stabbing one to the side, and slashing motion outward.

He is looking at his own body – his own face. The faint lines on his wrists and neck itch.

“Kill him,” resonates deep, a woman’s voice. The lights flicker again.

The cadaver before him is a grotesque sight, eyelids and lips cut off, nose broken, and its whole form twisted like there are too many joints, too many bones in it, in places that should not have those. But there is nothing familiar about it anymore.

“I wonder, are you even alive, Sunshine?” The Beast hisses affectionately in the back of his mind, its claws on his shoulders, and maw nestled in the crook of his neck.

Jack swallows something in his throat. Crazy or not.

“I’m not so sure myself,” the admittance lets something uncurl in his breast, something that gripped the spasming muscle behind his ribs for far too long; the recurring question of the time spent staring blankly at the tv running in the background and all the moments he felt like he was simply an observer of the other falling apart in his own skin – all this somehow fits now.

“Good,” the Beast seems pleased with the answer. “You need to hurry, Sunshine.”

“I know,” Jack answers to the accompaniment of a metallic clatter from the right. The banging repeats with a whine of transmissions, elevator doors trying to close blocked by an empty gurney pushed in between them. The cabin is stuck below in the shaft.

He steps around the obstacle and jumps to the maintenance ladder, his grip slipping for a frantic second, and begins to climb.

“Jack,” Lena calls over the comm.

“I’m here.”

“I’ve run into Lacroix and the doctor. They’ve said you were pretty in a bad way and it’s a bloody miracle you’ve pulled through.” Jack grits his teeth.

“Might be. Where are you?” He glances up, at the light filtering down the shaft.

“Reading on your level, maybe fifty away. T.A.C. lab, whatever bloody that is, and they are both tinkering with something.”

“Be there soon, going to zero on your signal. Out.” Jack leans away from the ladder, judging the distance, and then lunges forward. The muzzle of the rifle snatches on something and he almost trips, clutching the edge with his fingers, breathing hard. Slowly, he heaves himself up, and takes in the sights: blood splashed on the walls, some splatters reaching even the ceiling, the visible drag marks, and a grate clawed apart from the inside, with the gore hanging from the jagged metal edges – from something, or rather someone – pulled into the ventilation system overhead. Otherwise, the corridor is empty, and he follows Lena’s signal. Crazy or not.

The radio comes alive again, this time the interference rendering the voice almost unintelligible. Hanzo.

“I’ve seen it… …re’s something in here… a demon… going to follow it…” Jack wants to answer and warn him not to but the transmission ends and the crackle fades into silence. He can only hear his own breath, each step bringing him closer to this undefined purpose he has to chase.

Card reader turns green even before he reaches it.

“Thank god, Jack, you’re bloody here!” Lena beckons him from the inside. The room is starkly divided in the middle with something that looks like reinforced glass partition and a decontamination unit serving as a gateway. “I’m so fucking glad you’re here!”

“Indeed, but we do not have the time for the pleasantries. Sergeant Morrison, please step into the chamber,” Lacroix looks at him over the counter and gestures towards the unit that conveniently slides open. Said the spider to the fly, Jack chuckles to himself darkly, yet obeys.

“Amelie, uh, bugger, just asking, his lil’ swimmers going to be alright?” He breathes a sigh. God, Lena, and her cringeworthy questions…

“This should be the least of our concerns right now.” Lacroix seems to be amused. Doctor Ziegler cuts in from beyond his field of vision.

“There is no scientific data pointing to such an outcome. Running the attunement procedure.” The smell of ozone hits his nose and Jack can feel the hairs on his arms rise with static electricity as something comes online and blue lines course over the surface of the unit. “The output is almost optimal. Subject’s telestethic footprint shows a substantial increase.”

There is something crawling up his arm – physical, slithering – and he can’t bring himself to look.

And then, everything goes to hell in a handbasket; the doors on the other side of the room blast open with an explosive charge. Lena and the rest, they are yelling something, but it gets lost in the deafening hum in his head as the world becomes fuzzy around the edges. The intruders, the ones hunting them, Blackwatch, turn their guns at each other, dark tendrils of something living wrenching their hands and crushing them at the same time.

Reaper passes between them, disappears in one point of space and arrives in a different one, as if the rules of the universe do not apply to him, not anymore at least. Wrinkled dark fingers with pointed claws splay over the transparent surface and Jack slowly brings up his own hand, rippling shadows clinging to his skin, to touch the glass in the same spot on the other side.

He thinks he is bleeding again when the reality decomposes leaving nothing but the endless field of swaying grass around the old tree.

“What’s the matter, Sunshine?” The Beast by the tree asks, coiled in darkness, too many teeth and eyes burning red twitching in the shuddering mass crawling along the fluid surface. The claws shadow over his face. “Too close to the fire for the comfort?”

“Was there ever any comfort to be had?” Jack retorts and the Beast ripples back in mirth.

“Once, long ago.”

The bark crumbles under his touch when he traces ‘J’ and ‘G’ carved into it.

“There are things I don’t remember.”

“I do wonder, Sunshine,” the Beast gives way to the other presence. He feels the red eyes on his back.

“But I don’t think I’m the person you are looking for. He…” Jack remembers the body that was not there, with the throat slashed open and the face cut up just like his own. “He is dead, isn’t he?”

There it is, the anger, but this time he knows it is not directed at him. Lightning tears the crimson sky in half and wind roars flattening the grass to the ground.

With a blink of an eye Jack stirs inside the contraption, hands braced against the glass confines, and the familiar voice snaps his head up.

“Morrison. And they say to let the dead things stay dead,” Gerard taps on the glass. Behind him, Rutledge and Fawkes, and Jack cannot control the shudder that runs along his spine. “Only one reason why the queen whore brought you here. Harbinger. Get him out, he can be useful later. You two, with me, we have the bitches to capture.” He turns away.

Someone goes around the counter and the machinery comes to life. Jack braces for the pain but something almost physical pulls him back from the inside and throws him to the ground.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing FPS tropes, Abominations, and first character death.

_(…)_

_And crimson can seduce and turn a district into sleepers_

_Infect a righteous leader with a case of scarlet fever_

_Now let that crimson rise within, begin to see red_

_Catch that surprise, crimson reveals, begin to seem red_

_(…)_

 

The glass starts to give up under the fire, spider web cracks splintering slowly through the entire surface. Jack jerks when something bites into his forearm, pinpricks of claws feeling as if they broke the skin.

“Remember your training, Sunshine,” the Beast hisses with urgency and he scurries back and then up, towards the exit, turning back in the doorway only to open fire on the extinguisher mounted on the wall. A cloud of dense white dust spreads wide just as the glass shatters, covering his escape.

Two concussion grenades he had found earlier follow in short succession, two seconds apart, and Jack darts down the corridor, almost blindly. The first explosion blows the dust into the hallway behind him as he barrels through the door to the side, almost tripping on the steps when he stops on the barrier securing the staircase. The way up is blocked by the debris. Down is a risky jump, almost an entire flight of stairs is missing, and Jack does not hesitate to take a running start. He lands with a slight roll. Closes his eyes for a few calming breaths before he stands up and ducks into another corridor.

“Morrison,” Shrike calls him over the radio. “You need to hurry up. Blackwatch is going to bury this facility one way or the other. They are setting charges in the lower levels right now.”

Lena is not answering.

“The closest route?”

“Go forward then cut to your left. Some of the feeds are dead in the archives but that is to be expected after Fawkes’ group went through.” The mere mention of the name sends again phantom flashes of something crawling up his arm. “You are reading off the charts. With any luck, it will follow you.”

“It?” Jack spits out the question even if he knows the answer.

“Reaper.” Shrike disconnects.

“But then, Sunshine, she did always try our patience, didn’t she?” The Beast murmurs, its voice too tangible, and Jack stumbles, sight focused on his left palm where between his fingers weaves something black and oily, glistening – a pulsing mass of tendrils that split and come together like a living creature – yet cold and damp to touch. A slight lump is forming in the mass and ever so slowly it breaks up down the middle giving way to red – crimson – a strange eye gaping back at him. “Long time no see, Sunshine.”

“You are not real,” Jack whispers, continuing on the route given to him by Shrike. He feels like laughing. Like screaming. Like crying.

“Only as real as you yourself are, Sunshine.” A part of it travels up and coils around his neck once, twice, and then slithers to his cheek in a mockery of tender gesture – almost akin to a hand cupping his face. “Which isn’t saying much these days, is it?” A whimper escapes his lips.

“No, I guess it isn’t,” Jack answers through clenched teeth, all his muscles locking momentarily. Each step feels like he drags behind a dead weight above his limit. “Fuck. The pills…”

“Yes, Sunshine, your medication that you threw away so frivolously. Or did you?” With the next step, he hears a distinct rattle and panicked, leans on the wall, fingers frantically reaching for the pocket in his pants as he digs out the white plastic bottle. Jack unscrews the lid and shakes it over his sweating palm. Nothing. It’s empty. “I hear the withdrawal’s a bitch, Sunshine,” the Beast laughs derisively. Jack throws the bottle away, it bounces off the floor once, twice, and then rolls into a corner.

“What the fuck are you?”

The black mass recedes and slowly slides back under his collar, but Jack can still feel its invading presence.

“The question you should ask, Sunshine, is,” the Beast murmurs into his ear, “are you even still alive in there, under all those layers of lies you call yourself?”

Claws slowly ghost over his cheek and Jack turns, trepidation stabbing his insides, to stare into red eyes set in a discolored face of a dead body, the tissue shifting with the indiscernible soft sound of something crawling – like a chitinous whisper of an anthill swarming in the early spring sun. His teeth are chattering and his vision swims, capillaries bursting and then constricting with each thundering beat of his heart.

“Remember your training,” the Beast chuckles from afar.

His hands are coated in blood, fingers hurt where they grip the handle of the knife. He smells of smoke, soot, and ash. He stands before a body crumpled under the wall, almost mangled, face and throat torn up in a fashion that reminds him of a wild rabid animal.

And yet… and yet Jack knows it could not have been him because on the wall there is a bloody imprint where the body was thrown into it with enough strength to pulp it internally and force the blood out in showers where the flesh burst - skin stretched and torn like an old suit coming apart at the seams. Up, above, there are rusty red tracks on the plaster, almost like smeared and rushed handprints, leading up, into the pitch-black gap between the ceiling paneling.

His teeth are chattering and the blood on his hands refuses to crust mingled together with his own sweat he’s drenched in. He lacks the frame of reference to account for the missing time.

Down the corridor, in the gloom, something shuffles and howls.

“Run,” the Beast orders and Jack obeys. The creature follows, the meaty thuds of bare flesh on polished floors marking its impending progress with obscene slapping behind him. “Left.”

He dashes accordingly along the wall, the thing behind him closer and closer, its ragged breath joining his own in unison. Jack grips over his shoulder for the rifle and feels a momentary panic bubbling up when the shape is just wrong in his hands.

“Right now, Sunshine.”A shotgun. He checks the chamber, loaded, and then looks up, the creature just steps away from him. Dead end, reinforced door bolted shut. Too little space to maneuver. On the side, there are slanted windows behind a metal railing, angled like an observation dome. One is broken, jagged splinters glinting with each sway of his head.

Jack feels joints in his leg crunch with violent protest when in the middle of the run he plants the foot forcefully on the ground and then launches himself to the side, turning in the air, right through the hole. One of the crystalline edges grazes his arm leaving angry pain in its wake.

The creature rounds the turn and leaps after him. He fires falling. Its head bucks back, bits and pieces of flesh and bone flying to the side and up, the muscles tense for a fraction of a second and then it goes flaccid.

He hits something with his back hard enough to drive the air from his lungs and tumbles to the ground gracelessly. The monstrosity lands halfway between his legs with a wet meaty squelch, one hand on his shin, and he kicks it off. It’s vaguely human, emaciated – ribs visible under taut skin, arms strangely long and fingers curled like claws. Jack inhales slowly. Doesn’t feel like anything broken, the pain in his spine blunted to a dull ache, not a hot point of suffering it was immediately after the impact.

There are charts and screens all over the room, several of them still working, information displayed demanding immediate attention judging by blinking red. Something sparks above. A wet drop hits his cheek and Jack wipes it off with fingers, sticky substance slightly brighter than the blood already on his hands.

Slowly, he lifts himself off the ground. An operating theatre. He knows instinctively he doesn’t want to turn around. The edge of the stainless steel table digs into his back, aggravating the already forming bruise. His hands are trembling, lax on the shotgun.

Then, with a low growl, something tackles him from the side, and he slides on the broken glass, twisting, bringing the gun up braced sideways in both arms to serve as a guard as teeth crack together audibly in front of his eyes.

It’s the same type of creature, but now Jack can see all the different details. Its face is bloodied, the lips and eyelids are cut or torn off. It snarls clawing for his face and he bucks under it kicking, left hand reaching for its neck and the dark sludge surges upwards like a gravity-defying trickling stream of oil from under his cuff. The creature howls flinching back when it touches its bared skin.

It was – it is – human, Jack realizes. And if there is one thing Jack knows, it is that killing humans is easy.

His right hand goes for the knife and he stabs the blade under its chin, then twists it to the side and drags it down through its trachea. Hot blood pours on his face as it convulses over him and Jack casts it off to the side with a jerk, then crawls to a safe distance away.

It stills soon. The glass crunches under his soles when he comes closer to admire his work.

A large hand comes to rest on his shoulder.

“Good job, my friend,” Reinhardt agrees. “But this is not the end, you know it.”

“No. Just the beginning.” Jack nods. There is a sink in the corner. He can use it.

“He needs you for his vengeance, and it is indeed righteous. You have to help him have it.” The man laughs lightly.

“Probably because I’m batshit crazy already.”

“That I do not know, my friend.”

Jack closes the distance to the operating table that now seems more like a butcher’s slab and slides closed the eyelids over Reinhardt’s glassy eyes staring emptily into space above. He feels nothing. It must be shock.

His reflection drenched in blood in the mirror above the sink stares back at him, eyes almost shining, and the black pulsing tendrils creep out from under his collar, join together and form a wriggling mass that gives way to a single crimson eyeball set snuggly within it.

“This look suits you, Sunshine,” the Beast hisses affectionately. Jack turns on the tap and with gratitude splashes cold water on his face, washing off the blood. He scrubs his hands, and the knife.

He feels nothing but this dark purpose and the Beast is riding in his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exploding fire extinguishers, man.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mindfuck episode.

_(…)_

_Ghosts of the past always tend to revisit_

_Rarely will they come bearing gifts of forgiveness_

_And from the streets to the wars, so much violence he made_

_(…)_

 

The corridor Jack steps into is unsettling, the long stretch of the polished marble with dark blue columns turned almost black in the dim red light that filters through an arched glass roof overhead. He knows it does not belong here, in this place, it has been ripped out from somewhere else – a memory, his own or Reaper’s – and put here for him to stumble in, purposefully, or by accident maybe.

He swallows and checks the shotgun’s chamber. Three more shots. His footsteps echo in the silence, the only other sounds his own breath and the rustle of his clothes. The door made out of the frosted glass on the other side of the corridor slowly crawls further away from him with every bit of advance made. The tall grass that tickles his palm does not surprise him in the least.

Psychic shock. Hallucinations. Withdrawal. Crazy or not.

“I know you’re here,” Jack stops and defiantly calls out, shotgun lowered, teeth clenched. “Come out. Tell me what do you want from me…”

“I’m always here, Sunshine,” the Beast laughs and with a rushing trickle, the grass drowns in rising liquid, black sludge slowly creeping up until he stands up to his hips in it. It’s warm, detestably so, steaming in the air turned unexpectedly cold. “Now more than ever because, let’s face it, Sunshine, you need me.”

It’s blood. A river of blood. Jack trudges forward against the strengthening current that threatens to take him with it.

“No. Not you. You’re… you’re a part of me. Him.”

“I was, and always be, a part of you, Sunshine,” the Beast’s whisper fades when a claw traces the scar on his face, with care, sadness maybe, and Reaper comes closer, the expression on the ever-changing face struggling to keep its shape inscrutable. Jack holds his breath. The skin is cold to touch, clammy, and the smell of decomposing flesh surrounds them.

“They will all pay for what they did to us. For what they did to him.” The voice changes, travels, sounds from different points in space.

In a way, it is reassuring, the knowledge that he is merely a surrogate for someone already gone, Jack thinks when the surging current, a wave of rolling darkness, knocks him over and dunks him under the surface. The whole world reorients itself along some axis, the turn of perception dizzying, and he presses his palm against the glass door.

Something in the darkness beyond the threshold screams, long anguished soundless wails reverberating in his chest like a sound wave underwater, more felt than heard. He cannot even start to imagine how anything – anyone – can produce sounds like these, with such suffering forced into each single tone, and still live. Still exist.

He pushes on the frosted glass. Vertigo makes him sway on his legs when the reality again stretches and crashes into his senses. Jack wipes the blood away from his nose with his wrist and duly notes that the open gash on his forearm is gone, and only an angry jagged – slightly raised – pink line is left behind.

He is standing next to the vent, the floor and the wall around it are littered with angry red scribbles, fingerpainted, manic, disjointed, but from that chaos, order emerges the longer he stares at it. Letters and numbers form amino-acid sequences and equations, organic reactions reimagining themselves into something living in his mind.

“The formula to create you, Sunshine,” the Beast purrs. “The recipe for making more of you.”

And above all of that, a question, meticulously formulated, blood still fresh and uncoagulated: ‘Can he truly see him?’.

“Well, ain’t that a bloody good question, at that, luv?” Lena snickers from the left and slides up her goggles. Each of her movements leaves electric blue lines fading slowly in the air. There are bullet holes in her throat, her right eye is missing from its socket, and her uniform is stained black at the midsection. “I reckon the knobhead really wants you to notice him, Jackie.”

Jack feels the inevitability weigh down on him, something constricts his throat. He shakes his head as if to clear his mind. His fingertips brush against the wall and smear the blood.

“Now, luv, don’t go shellshocked on my behalf, there’s still a lot of fecking ground to cover,” Lena rolls her remaining eye. “I could do without you going full nutter.”

“How?” Jack swallows, bending down to peer into the vent.

“Does it matter?” Her hand rests on his head. Fingers soothingly card through his hair. “All soldiers are is lambs led to slaughter. Future banquet for worms. Monsters bred to create monsters. A neverending cycle.”

“Yes. It matters. To me.” Jack crouches and almost balks at the stench of fresh viscera and its spilled contents coming from inside.

“Now, Sunshine,” the Beast hisses, “you’ve smelt worse.” Yes, yes, he had, so he slips inside. The light on his visor illuminates metallic lining of the duct. Jack tentatively moves forward on all fours. Lena is beside him.

“You tell me, luv. You ditched the meds, didn’t you? I’m just a bloody fidget of your broken mind, you duffer. What was that thing Shrike said? Psychic shock, luv.” She smiles, white teeth glinting from the corner of her mouth. “So, in all probability, I’m telling you what you want to hear. What you already believe. Or what the wankiest of them all wants you to believe.”

His hand lands with a squelch in something wet. He doesn’t look and sidles – as far as he can, pressed into aluminum wall – past the lower half of a body. Ripped intestines hang down over the ridges of torn muscle.

“So, Jack, luv,” Lena laughs, “don’t keep him waiting. Remember your training. See him for what he is,” she adds somberly, her nails dig into his scalp. “You need to see him. You need to forget your fear.”

An opening, down into another corridor, and now he does not need to wonder where the other half of the body went, it lays just below. Jack swallows and positions himself gripping the edge of the vent, then slowly lowers himself and swings.

He lands with a soft thump, crouched. Everything is silent. Too silent. He has the uncanny feeling that someone watches him through the eye of the camera on the wall, someone hostile, someone with an agenda differing from his own.

Jack looks back at the vent and Lena smiles at him. She pulls down her goggles and gives him thumbs-up, then disappears from his sight.

He inspects the shotgun again. Three shots. The knife is in its holster, the Seegert too. The vest seems to have the integrity intact. The closest exit is reinforced, the card reader again glaring red at him, so he passes it. Around the corner, another camera observes each his step.

“Yes, Sunshine,” the Beast walks with him. “Someone prepared the way for you. I wonder what was his intention.”

There are bodies in dark-colored hospital scrubs littering the floor. Red cross on the wall. He feels no compassion towards them, not anymore. There are singular piles of ash. He tries not to step on them.

The path leads him through another set of cubicles. The feeling of scrutiny makes him paranoid and he glances up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling, catching the briefest glint of movement. Why? He turns, inspecting the office space.

The PDA sitting precariously on the edge of the desk flickers in the dim of the room, the blue glow of the screen bathing immediate surroundings in an eerie light. Jack slowly approaches and takes a hold of it even if every shred of his instinct screams danger. It smells like an intricate trap he’s entering willingly.

The datapad still receives transmission and is logged into the secure network of the facility. He wonders how unlikely it is the little fact the whole infrastructure is still standing got overlooked by Gerard. There is always one position highlighted and he quickly swipes through several menus along the path left for him until his finger hesitates and slowly moves from ‘Blackwatch Personnel’ to ‘Replica Project’ – and then to ‘Subject 76 Field Test’.

“There is no need, Sunshine,” the Beast murmurs, “for you to read this.”

“Why?” It surges around his wrist yet remains silent except for a hushed hiss bubbling just under its surface, so Jack opens the file. The letters seem to quiver on the faintly glowing screen.

‘I’d like to recommend that the next time there is a need for Blackwatch personnel to supervise any kind of prototype testing, they are reminded of proper protocols for handling the test subjects. Proper handling would have prevented the unfortunate loss of several soft assets.

While most of the protocols were breached during the incident, we can deem the field test in its entirety as sufficiently successful, especially because of the issues revealed. There is a need to develop a more secure method of establishing and ending the connection of our subjects to Reaper as it seems that the incident was initiated rather spontaneously without prior activation of Subject 76, due to the physical trauma the specimen underwent.’

Something cold is crawling down his spine and his breath grows short. The letters on the screen start to swim, but that’s because his hands are trembling, Jack idly notices from somewhere beside himself.

‘During the five-minute twenty-two seconds long synchronization event, Subject 76 barehanded had dispatched four acting members of Blackwatch and gravely wounded another two (see attached footage). The specimen itself suffered several combat injuries, none lessening its combat eligibility in the long run after proper recuperation period. The other injuries that lead to the test subject’s activation correspond with…’

He cannot read anything else, the words run together and transform into smears on the screen. It does not matter because there are hands at his throat and his lungs burn when he tries to draw a breath. He drops the PDA and claws panicked at his neck trying to pry them off.

Cold fingers cover his eyes and something – someone – physical stands behind him, the other hand guiding his wrists down away from his bared bloodied throat.

“I’m here,” the voice is distant and distorted, hoarse. “You don’t need to know this. You shouldn’t know this.”

For a brief moment, the darkness that envelops him is comforting, and Jack slowly breathes to the rhythm of the ever-present sluggish beat.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are still not out of the damn hospital. On the other hand, when I say character death, I do mean character death. Take your meds. Really.

_(…)_

_And ways of the weapon bombard_

_Building mountains of them body bags large_

_Rubbernecking while collision greet your car_

_And you may know your name but don't know who or what you are_

_(…)_

 

He is leaning on the desk, eyes wildly searching around to orient himself. His hand brushes against something and Jack focuses on the PDA. Its screen, smeared with blood and broken as if someone punched it, flickers irregularly. Hesitantly he reaches for it.

His own hands are covered in fresher blood, scraps of skin under his fingernails. Where did it come from? Still holding the PDA he turns around, looking for the source. There is none.

He remembers grasping the datapad, searching for something, but now the thing is wiped clean when he manages to get it to react to his touch. Seventy-six. Seventy-six is something important, something that still stays with him – the number, there is something going on with the number, something that makes his vision swim and his breath shorten when he concentrates on it. Seventy-six. Seventy-six. He feels the bile rise in his throat.

Jack glances towards the camera. It seems somehow… dead now. The oppressive paranoid sensation of being observed is gone, like an invisible weight lifted from his shoulders.

“Yeah, the blighter is away now, luv,” Lena sighs. “If he could bloody see us now, hah, I reckon you gone and pissed into his cereal real good with this bloody stunt. Don’t say we didn’t warn you, luv.”

“We did, didn’t we?” The Beast laughs, malevolent vestiges of sound floating around Jack is sure he is the only one able to hear. “But do you ever listen, Sunshine?”

“Seventy-six, what does it mean? Why is it significant?” He turns towards Lena who shrugs without a care.

“You tell me, luv,” she rolls her remaining eye, “I wouldn’t even bloody know where to begin…” Her words are cut short by the electric hum of the communicator. Jack almost screams in relief when he hears the voice, distorted by the interference, but still recognizable.

“…lost them… think I found exit… can hear me… verge on my position…” It’s Lena. She’s alive. Alive and not that thing before him, but any answer he might want to shout at her dies in his throat as the apparition changes shape and form, its gaze and skin darken, hair grow long and black with hints of grey, the uniform loses any identification but not the stains of dried blood, and under the single eye that is not a gaping hole a tattooed symbol comes to life.

“This is no moment to dwell on the past, rafeeq,” the woman – the woman he knows not – speaks, and he understands. Rafeeq. Friend. One you trust with your life. “You do not have much time left to linger here, yours is the soldier’s lot and the battles are before you.”

It’s too much, too much of everything, he feels like drowning, like the ground is slipping from under his feet, and there is no-one to catch him as he falls into the hungering darkness of his own mind that creates those phantoms for him. Crazy or not. Not a question. A denial. The fractures propagate. He cannot see himself behind the spider web they create.

“Why? Why can’t you all let me be? What… What are you, who are you?” Jack all but screams the questions at her but she steps closer and cradles his face in her palm. It emanates warmth and familiarity.

“That I cannot tell you, rafeeq, the only answers I know are the ones you know yourself, but he, he can show you the way,” she smiles and cranes her head to the side, it is not a happy smile, but a smile nonetheless. “He knows all the answers, you feel it, and you have to make him understand he needs to share them, you have to make him show it to you. Because it’s you that has to understand for whom he’s looking for and help him find that person.”

“He is dead,” Jack remembers the body in the morgue and the wraith’s words, “he can’t find someone’s who’s dead.” He feels tired, so tired, his voice comes out hushed and pained.

“And maybe, rafeeq, this is exactly what you have to show him, make him realize his search is in vain, and the only thing left is balancing the scales,” she steps back and pulls him by his wrist towards the exit. “He has chosen you, after all, given you a part to play.”

“And no choice in the matter,” he lets her lead him, somehow her presence is comforting.

“And if you had the choice, what would you do?”

“I don’t…” Jack starts to respond, but the Beast, dormant till now, purrs against his skin.

“Tell it how it is, Sunshine, don’t be coy,” it shows its fangs in a wide grin, long dark tongue licking its maw leisurely.

“I would still follow him,” he admits. He cannot deny the draw, the purpose, the drive, something lacking for so long he cannot recall when was the time he had an objective – a goal – something to look forward to. He remembers endless days spent drifting and counted only by dwindling prescriptions and sessions in-between deployments, the dull haze of waiting for a presence that was never there. “Waiting for him,” the realization staggers him as he swallows. “Why was I…?”

“The same way you know the path. You have seen those halls, rafeeq,” she lets go of his hand. “Maybe you don’t know him but you do know him because there is a formula to creating you and a recipe for making many more of you,” she points towards the turn of the corridor, at the door protected with a code lock. “The sacred sequence of life.”

Jack looks at her, at her tattoo and missing eye, at the throat punctured by bullets, at the dark stains on her stomach, and then advances towards the lock and lays his hand on it. The letters become the equations, present an elegant solution that makes his stomach lurch and tie in knots as his fingers slide over the keys with a mind of their own. Muscle memory. Muscle memory of something he had never done before. When he looks back over his shoulder, she is gone, her absence feels almost physical, and he wonders if she were someone important to him, once, or if his mind chose her shape on a whim.

“Oh, I’m not telling, Sunshine,” the Beast chortles behind him as he crosses the threshold into pristine halls far removed from the chaos and death made comfortable in other parts of the facility. Talon logos adorn the walls. “Merely the withdrawal.” At the mention, Jack feels the perspiration on his skin and his fingers stray from the proper code, the next lock beeps at him accusingly before he gets it right. The pills. The goddamn pills. His mouth runs dry and he staggers, leaning against the wall. Crazy. Crazy. Batshit crazy. No question about it.

Footsteps. Jack brings up the shotgun and hugs the wall, peering over the corner. He takes a deep breath, then calls out, tries to call out but the first time he fails.

“Genji.” The footsteps abruptly stop.

“That you, Morrison?” Jack extends his hand out, fist clenched, then shows two fingers in confirmation. “Fuck. Never have I thought I’m going to say I’m happy to see you, you old fuck.”

“Your comm, what’s up with it?”

“Man, you’re not gonna believe that, but it’s wrecked, something smashed me against a wall, still got splinters in my face,” Genji comes closer and Jack moves out of his cover to meet him. “And it fucking well didn’t look human. Or didn’t feel like one, either.”

“I know. What’s your status.”

“Fucking relieved, man,” Genji laughs shortly but his expression stays nervous, lips straining. “Nothing much. Lot of bodies, scavenged some for rifle and magazines. Fuck, there’s a lot of those PMCs strewn around, and civilians, and something fucked them up real fucking good.”

“There are no civilians,” Jack steps to the side, “this is Talon blacksite. Blackwatch’s purging it. Some of their specimens must have gotten out in the meantime.”

“Ah, shit, you weren’t joking about that Blackwatch shit,” Genji’s face scrounges up in disgust. “Fuck. Fiddlesticks. Fuck. Have you heard anything from my brother?”

Jack lets him take the point. It’s good… to talk with someone breathing. Living. Real. Corporeal. Maybe he’s not as crazy as he expects.

“I heard him,” he admits. “Some time ago. He didn’t sound well, but no-one here is well,” Jack adds. “There’s someone else in here with us. Reaper.”

“Now, sunshine, that’s a fucking stupid name, if you ask me. You come up with it?” Genji chuckles, nodding at him and gesturing towards another bend with a sway of his head. Jack moves and crouches. Clear.

“LaCroix used the designation. Team One supposedly released him out of containment.”

“So Jesse’s…”

“I don’t know. But if you start seeing, hearing strange things, he’s close,” Jack turns back to look at Genji and freezes at the shadows whirling behind him. He stands up while his visor glass crackles with interference and blinks.

“Jesus fucking Buddha, I have something on my face, what?” Genji takes a step as Jack moves back raising his hand to gesture at the person – Hanzo – emerging from the rippling gloom. Static in his ears becomes unbearable, stabbing into his brain. “Fucking shit, Morrison, talk to me!”

Hanzo stops and lifts his handgun, levels it with Genji’s head. Jack wants to call out, to warn him, lips starting to form sounds when the older Shimada pulls the trigger. Something wet sprays on his face. Jack feels strong shudder traveling along the length of his own body.

Genji falls forward.

He’s shivering, his fingers are trembling, but it’s something besides the point, besides everything, because he’s standing to the side. He feels nothing as he reaches for the cigarette and puts it between his lips. Absentmindedly, he notes his fingers are still covered in blood, there is still flesh under his fingernails. He lights the cigarette up staring at motionless Hanzo, at the horror slowly spreading on the man’s face.

Inhale. Count. Exhale.

He feels nothing.

Inhale. Count. Exhale.

“No… No, that’s not… the demon,” Hanzo is babbling, his eyes glance erratically to the sides, he’s hyperventilating, and Jack knows he should run but he is an observer standing to the side. “The demon, oni, it killed… it killed him.”

Jack is somewhere else and the Beast laughs, it laughs when it kisses his cheek slobbering on it with black tar. Inhale, count, exhale.

“No,” this isn’t his voice, can’t be his voice, he cannot speak calmly, he feels nothing as he locks eyes with glaring red points in the darkness over Hanzo’s shoulder, “he merely gave you a nudge.”

“What do you speak of?” Hanzo’s head snaps up and Jack continues.

“He gave you the conviction to make real on what you’ve always wanted to do. You’ve removed the disgrace,” Jack shakes his head. Shadows crowd the edges of his vision.

“No, no… You,” Hanzo suddenly hollers, ”you scheme with the demon. I can see that! It’s your doing! Your…!” Jack stares down the barrel of the gun and at the same time sees the image of Hanzo pulling the trigger.

The bullet hits something with a wet splotch just beside his left ear and Hanzo fires again but from the writhing gloom behind him a gnarled growth springs forward and grabs at him. It pulls him back into black miasma, his body contorts amidst howls of pain and sickening crunches of breaking bones and muscles being torn. Jack finishes his cigarette and throws the butt away.

He feels nothing staring at the oily glistening remains in the corner. His hands shake. It must be shock.

“No, Sunshine,” the Beast whispers against his skin as Reaper drifts past him, “you just don’t care.” He does not care. He cannot afford to care. His legs buckle under him and he sinks to knees, breathing sharp and deep. “I told you, didn’t I, Sunshine, that we would kill him? And we just did.”

And we just did. You don’t like him. We will kill him. And we just did. Jack tries to find purchase, lift himself, but his body seizes and he spews the bile until his throat burns and there is nothing more left to vomit.

And even then he’s still retching slimy mucus and saliva.

You don’t like him. We will kill him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And we are officially out of the damn hospital. Jet fires are fun. Plot dump, foreshadowing, and Jack has a discussion with Shrike.

_(…)_

_Eyes wide shut but they know_

_Buried alive by the lies in their soul_

_Their stride of a blind man's stroll_

_Well for whom does the next bell toll_

_(…)_

 

His fingers grip at the grating and he throws up again, this time the gunk is white and has the consistency of a jelly, flows in bursts, and trickles down into the drains below the grid that makes up the floor. His body hurts. The light that floods the room makes him clench his eyes shut in pain.

Someone is holding him, an arm bracing against his chest, a hand on his forehead.

“You have to get up, please, you have to get up now,” the voice is everywhere around him and Jack tries to answer that he cannot but his vocal chords refuse to cooperate, instead producing an anguished croak. The person holding him tugs him upwards so he fights against his protesting muscles. “Get up. There is no time, we have no time. Please.”

But as he finally hoists himself up and opens his eyes, Jack finds himself again among the swaying grass under swirling crimson sky against which a frozen flock of birds floats in the air – and by the tree, a shadow stands. Its hand brushes the letters carved into the bark. It turns and Jack involuntarily takes a step back.

The man’s pupils are blown wide, wide enough that there is not a sliver of color left yet Jack is sure they are that certain watery shade of blue, with every breath bloody bubbles burst on his lips, and when he opens his mouth dark red blood just flows lazily with clots breaking away and falling separately.

“Replica.” A single word that to his ears sounds like an accusation from the wraith that bears his own face, not yet scarred, younger.

A crack of a rifle. The man wavers on his legs and falls to the side, into the grass, and somehow, inexplicably, Jack follows, hitting the ground with a dull thud. Between the blades of the grass, he observes the birds flying against the sky, now in motion, majestic, uncaring. Claws card through his hair and with a blink he’s leaning on the wall, the acidic taste of vomit on his tongue, his throat burning.

With a groan, he steadies himself and wipes his face on the left sleeve, his eyes darting towards the body on the floor. He feels nothing. He does not care. Death is death, even if it plays favorites sometimes. Everybody knew what they were signing up for.

First few steps are shaky, like his legs have forgotten how to walk. Jack bends down to gather the shotgun he must have dropped earlier and continues on his path, instinctively knowing where he should go.

“Shrike.” There is a pause before she answers, a waver in her electronic voice betraying some uncertainty and disbelief.

“I see that you made it to the outer shell of the facility, Jack.”

“Replica. What is it?”

“How do you know it?” There is some insistence in her words, something nagging. Jack knows she won’t lie to him, but she is under no obligation to tell him anything.

“Someone mentioned it in passing.”

“Talon’s pet project. Genetically engineered soldiers. Operational. One company went rogue and tore through their headquarters earlier.”

“That’s Team One. Any in the immediate vicinity?”

“There is a testing facility outside of the complex, but all should be dormant without…” Shrike pauses, withholding the information. He doesn’t mind, not particularly, as long as she comes through in the end, and chuckles darkly. Should be. With his luck, they won’t be.

“And seventy-six in reference?”

“Always cutting to the chase. Obsolete model. The testing phase to work out the kinks out of the system,” she delays her answer. “But that doesn’t concern you, Jack. At least not yet.”

“I think our mutual friend might disagree,” Jack hisses through his teeth.

“Reaper. Reaper told you that?”

“It’s all because of what was done to them, isn’t it, to him and the person he’s looking for?” Another code lock, the same sequence, doors open with a whine, and in the corridor one light is shorting – bathing the area in unreality. For a split second, he can see a dark figure dissolving into smoke.

“It’s not ‘him’. Reaper is an ‘it’. It’s the apocalypse and death of all, and it would do you good, Jack, to remember it,” Shrike tersely interrupts. “It will move on if it’s not stopped, and consume until it consumes everything!”

“He’s not a thing,” Jack screams at her, “they treated him, them, like a thing, like their damn property, and no-one did anything, and that’s why everything went to shit now, why half of my unit is fucking dead, and everyone else is a dead man walking!”

“You will see for yourself it’s not a person, it is a force of nature that has to be reckoned with,” she cuts him off and closes the line. He knows that somehow he had hurt her. That he had intended to hurt her. Because… they… treated them… like things. Not human beings. And she was doing the same, the same damn thing, and somehow, somehow, it felt like a betrayal. He almost trips when she addresses him again. “They’ve accelerated the demolition schedule, you have to hurry!”

The deep rumble that resonates through the concrete structure starts him. The tremors and quakes come in waves that cap in a roaring thunder just under the edge of perception. They have detonated the charges. Soon, the whole place will go under burying its secrets beneath heaps of rubble and jagged steel. Shrike’s screaming at him – something that gets lost in the noise – but the Beast, the Beast speaks clearly.

“Run, Sunshine.” Jack grits his teeth and runs. He can’t be far from the exit, not after the hours he spent in here navigating the labyrinthine corridors of this nightmarish not-hospital. “Good call, Sunshine,” the Beast, coiled against his arm reassuringly, agrees. “Forward. Always forward, Sunshine.”

He pays no attention to terrified screams of someone dragged off into the darkness to the side as he passes them. He has no time to spare. He has no time to panic. His mind is empty – save for the immediate need for survival, to serve his purpose in full. Another tremor throws him against the wall and he drops the shotgun, it bounces and slides away. He doesn’t waste time stopping to retrieve it.

And then, just as the floor threatens to give up under him, he sees it, at the end of the hallway, the freight elevator. His ticket out.

Jack stops for a second to catch his breath. The pipes clinging to both sides of the corridor groan and whine under the pressure of applied tension – twisting, moving, setting.

He breaks into a run again. Behind him metal screeches, then gives, and with unearthly hiss a wave of heat hits him. No way back. Never back. Always forward.

Something wheezes past his head, a shrapnel hurled by the building up pressure reaching the critical point. The deafening hum of fire growing in strength nips at his heels.

Jack jumps inside and punches the button, then turns around, braced against the cabin’s back. To face the incoming inferno as under heat and stress pipes contort and splinter. The mechanism groans. The gate is closing too slow – the lattice offers no shelter against the fire.

 And, in the flames, something grows out of the shadows, flies towards him with a wail of anger, like a demon, or a dragon, no, both, a cross between. Hanzo. Teeth bared. Fury.

“You killed him!” The apparition howls. Its claws rip the walls and floor as it closes in rapidly, its bulk impossibly fitting into the hall. Jack slides to the ground, legs forced against the gate that finally locks. His fingers grip the pistol and he raises it up just as the monstrous entity reaches the door grate. Claws rip at the wire.

Jack pulls the trigger. Hanzo rears back into the fire and dissipates in it. The elevator’s mechanism creaks and shudders. Then, the ascent starts.

Too little, too late.

Jack tucks into the corner, face away from the flames, curled. The heat descends upon him. He can feel the soles of his boots softening.

And then, after an eternity, a whiff of a cool air. Slowly, he opens his eyes, and then laughs through tears, again and again, an agonizing sound that shreds his tender throat in its wake. Laughter morphs into howls as he grips his head in his hands, kicking the side of the elevator repeatedly. He wants everything to stop. Ha wants to stop feeling. He wants to stop existing.

“Easy now, Sunshine. Do you remember…” The Beast whispers soothingly – threading itself around his fingers, its coils almost like a kiss against his knuckles. A constant. A pressure against his mind. He lets the Beast ride in his skin.

“…my training,” Jack finishes for it. He wipes his face with one hand and looks around, finally taking in the sights and sounds. The cavern is enormous, the portions where artificial light doesn’t reach bathed in shadows, but most importantly, the structure he escaped, it starts falling apart in places, the timed explosions still going off inside.

Alarms blare in the background. The orders for evacuation. Blackwatch running, some of them written off as acceptable loss – regular grunts. No-one notices him. He only has his knife and the pistol. It will be enough, for now.

Jack grips the edge of the gate and then forces it up. His steps don’t falter when he closes the distance to the closest enemy and puts the barrel to his face. Killing humans is easy, it’s the ghosts that hurt. The surprise is on his side. The other one, he grabs and pushes the pistol under his jaw, then drops the dead man and drags him behind a metal container, out of sight.

Efficiently, he strips his vest and jacket, exchanges them for Blackwatch uniform and a new vest. Quickly, he straps the knife to the side, the lighter and cigarettes go into a side pocket, he then flicks the helmet to dislodge the bigger chunks of gore and puts it on. The last one is the mask. He can pass in the commotion.

He can only hope Lena, and Winston, made it out in time.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We get to the testing facility. Finally. The plane in question is Shaanxi Y-8 gunship variant, a nice thing for a moderate PMC outfit. There’s a mention of suicide. Gerard gives exposition in twirling-mustache-villain-fashion. Also, introducing core mechanic.

_(…)_

_There's time on the wall, but no one around_

_His will is numb, he's half in the ground_

_If all we are is all we were_

_Then he'd soon pass on without a whisper_

_(…)_

The whole structure is coming apart around him, metal catwalks adjacent to it on this side scream and twist, portions of the construction break off and fall below. Jack follows the way down where the exit must be – the cavern’s ceiling is a flat surface of rock as far as he can see it. The masquerade is working in his favor, someone pats his arm and points in the direction of the evacuation route, or what is left of one, more likely.

But then the Beast tugs at his arm and he turns to the other side just as the metal bridge groans and rips in half under falling rocks, taking with it an unfortunate soldier. The man flails in the air descending to his death, and Jack observes him idly as he himself catches the outer sides of a ladder and grinds the soles of his boots into steel enclosure, then he merely slackens his grip and slides, landing on the platform below just in time for the whole upper part to sway and start collapsing on itself.

The ladder snaps, the whole portion of the catwalk looms above falling in slow motion. Jack clutches the railing, bracing for the impact, hunkering down. He only manages to drag in one breath before the crash jostles him, it feels almost like his arm gets torn out of its socket, and then he is falling.

He doesn’t register the moment his body smashes into the concrete, only the darkness whispering it will take him with it when it goes.

A jolt of pain to his ribs wakes him up. He cannot feel his hands behind his back. Someone barks a command at him in French. Moroccan accent. Get up. Profanities follow. Another kick catches the inside of his thigh and with a gasp, he manages to roll himself to rest on his side. Water.

He thanks whoever listens for the mask stopping him from aspirating the liquid and sits up. The twisted canopy of bent metal elements above groans dangerously.

“Fuck.” Doesn’t feel like anything broken, the memory of phantom blows is only that, a memory, something dredged up from god knows where. He should be dead, the fall from that height should have killed him, there is no way he could have survived it even encased in a metal cage. And even if, by an uncanny stroke of luck, when he moves his arm, it does not protest, not more than usual – the joint works perfectly.

“Lucky you,” with a short derisive laugh that sprays blood the blonde apparition looks him straight into eyes, the voice familiar, grating, decidedly unfriendly. Jack inhales sharply at the image. “Get the fuck up.”

“You aren’t like the others.”

“Give the man his cookie, he earned it,” his doppelganger glares, lips curled up into a sneer. With each word more clotted blood spills and mingles with murky water. “I’m not going to repeat myself again. Get the fuck up.”

“Little restless, aren’t you, Sunshine?” The Beast caresses the side of his neck as Jack makes his move to stand up, stopped in mid-motion when the wraith reaches out and its fingers make contact with the black mass. Apparition’s face softens, becomes almost vulnerable with a tragic melancholy – desperation – written on it.

“I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you so much… You didn’t take me with you,” the doppelganger whispers. “You left me.”

“Did I, Sunshine? I am here, after all, I am always with you,” the Beast murmurs back as the apparition flickers and dissolves in the faint lighting filtering in from above. “I am a part of you, Sunshine, always were and always will be,” it laughs, the sound bubbling under its surface, breaking out in waves, covering surroundings in rainbow-tinted luminosity that stretches the screech of metal into an unbearable low whine. “There will never be a point of return.”

“There will never be a point of return,” Jack, lifting himself up, repeats after it. The same kind of radiance that bathes every surface of an encompassing area follows in the wake of each of his movements. Something is wrong with how the water he wades in behaves, very wrong, like the surface tension does not want to give under his soles and sticks to his boots. He passes droplets almost frozen in the air – light refracts in them lazily painting space in pastels – and every breath he takes sluggishly flows between his lips, trickles down his throat like molasses.

And as he enters the concrete tunnel the time collapses into itself, the whine becomes a shrieking wail of roaring destruction when all the precariously balanced debris sink under their own weight; stones, concrete, and metal coming down with a delayed fury of gravity finally taking a jealous hold on its regained domain. Jack glances back – the way behind him is definitely blocked now.

He forces down nausea at the realization mere seconds – maybe even less – separated him from being crushed under the rubble. It also comes with a heady kiss of adrenaline that threatens to split his brain in two, and the hum of the rushing blood in his ears dampening any other sound into an indistinct echo. Jack licks his chapped lips. Probably around twenty-four hours since he ate anything. Or drunk. Or took the pills, damn pills, that have him shaking with every mention.

“Such a disturbing notion, Sunshine, isn’t it, every little dirty secret buried under the poison you willingly take crawling back out of the woodwork?” The Beast’s voice cuts through the haze. Jack walks the only direction available, away from the rubble, left hand raised and fingertips trailing the concrete of the tunnel. It’s grounding, in a way, helps with the tremors. “And who knows where the lies end?”

“You know, for being me, you’re fucking vague,” Jack chokes out a stifled chuckle.

“Where would be the fun in it being any other way? Just remember, Sunshine, we will kill them all, we will carve every nerve from their muscle, we will suck out the marrow from their bones, I promise you.”

“Yes. We will kill them all.” Bizarrely, the sentiment, and the words, bring some satisfaction, enough to curl up the corners of his mouth, it’s not a smile, not really, but the noise in his ears slowly dies down replaced by the sound of splashing water and whizzing air somewhere beyond the tunnel’s exit he’s nearing.

“And every step of the way I’ll be with you, Sunshine.”

“I know. I know.”

The area Jack enters has a different feel than the pretend hospital and the labs housed in the underground complex now entombed under tons of rock behind him. No, all the pretense is dropped here unceremoniously – everything speaks of industrial design and purpose. On the left, there are two elevator platforms, one of them broken and tilted to the side, the other seems stable.

He walks to the ledge and stares into the darkness below trying to come up with something, anything, that could be there in the cavern, deeper, so they would need to haul cargo, enough of it to warrant the elevators. It doesn’t matter. He can always come back and check.

As if to answer the possibility, the intact platform trembles and breaks off in a shower of sparks, plummeting down with a ripped off part of the rail. He waits for the sound of impact, counting. Almost fifteen seconds. Above one klick down.

“Shit.” So that leaves only one possible direction, another tunnel, and the only light he can see is at the entrance, above him. With uneasiness, Jack steps into the darkness, and a light warm breeze brushes his skin.

He glances at the aircraft flying low, dark under the crimson sky, reflective surfaces glinting menacingly. Four engines. Shaanxi. He doesn’t really bother with thinking what would be the reason to use Chinese plane other than smoke and mirrors, all the plausible deniability shtick, doesn’t buy into ‘the best for the best’, it’s not his area of expertise anyway.

What he does know, observing as the craft circles lazily to make its approach, is that when it touches down, something happens, something that has him freeze in apprehension, and turn towards the tarmac hidden behind the tall swaying grass where two shades walk side by side.

No. He has to warn them because when the plane lands it happens – whatever that it is – and they are there, oblivious, just walking – talking – like everything is right but it is only an illusion and it will happen. It. Will. Happen.

Yet before he can move one of the silhouettes turns around and red eyes pin him in place, leave him breathless and faltering. Scared of the wrath and visceral hate gleaming in them, and with a snarl the darkness rushes at him, the grass divides and flattens under chittering onslaught screaming murder with a multitude of one voice simultaneously.

It smashes into him – goes through him – and Jack hits the wall, thrown, shoulder painfully colliding with the solid surface. Gasping for precious air. He rips the mask off his face and stares into space.

Reaper is trapped. He is trapped, in those moments, memories possibly, he realizes, and he pulls him under into them with him either consciously or unwittingly, into a place that doesn’t exist but maybe parts of it did, the tree, the airstrip, the grass, and Jack is an intruder there.

He can imagine what it does to anyone when the pain of the blade and the smell of burnt meat, the screams, and the thunder, they are always lingering just at the edge of his own awareness, never entirely gone, the Beast stinging behind his teeth, looking through his eyes, whispering in his ears.

“Who isn’t a prisoner of their own past, Sunshine?”

“The plane,” Jack chuckles, looking at his hands. Inadvertently he rolls his sleeves up to see the faint lines on his wrists, hardly raised anymore. “When it lands, he dies, that person dies, gets his throat somehow slashed, not just cut, slashed, and he knows that, relives it, but he still… refuses to acknowledge it?” Dark tendril uncurls around his arm and brushes against the scar, lingering on the discolored flesh, and he tries to keep the stinging tears back. “I don’t even remember,” he laughs. “I should know better. If you want to die you don’t do it like that. It gives them too much time to force you to live.”

“No, Sunshine,” the Beast murmurs back, the sound deprived of its usual ridicule, “you can’t die yet, not until we kill our old friends, all of them.”

Somehow, with applied force, black tendril pulls his hand away from where it tried to grab the knife still strapped to the jacket. Jack slowly draws a breath, holds it for five seconds, and then exhales. The shaking stops after he repeats it several times.

“Good, Sunshine, now up. You have to go through the dome.”

He doesn’t question. To his right is gaping darkness, and to the left, the way ahead is buried under rocks, the ceiling caved in, but luckily the same occurrence crashed and bent the frame of another observation theatre. Judging by the thickness of the glass he wouldn’t be able to shoot through it. Below he can see screens rapidly flashing images in front of something that looks like a heavy reinforced platform crossed with a chair, something one would see in a cheap science fiction flick rather than in a laboratory or any industrial context. By the foot of it pools something that looks suspiciously like blood.

Three meters, give or take. He can’t roll, not really, not with all the shards littering the ground below. Jack positions himself cautiously, and jumps, landing on bent legs to the accompaniment of crunching glass. He bites back the groan in answer to his joints and muscles protesting the awkward pose and tension, draws the pistol, listening. Only the hum of machines.

Slowly he rounds the chair. In it, cuffed, sits the same kind of creature – human – he encountered earlier, emaciated, twisted, and very dead, with a part of construction stabbed through its – his – chest. Jack doesn’t know what he feels confronted with the sight, is it relief or pity for it – him?

The door further from his position is slightly ajar, one of the hinges broken, but he can glimpse the rubble behind it. No go. With glass creaking under his feet he slips toward the only other exit, a narrow short hallway that opens into a bigger area with strange half-finished construction bits, partitions with gaps that appear to mimic parts of buildings with doors and windows. There is a burned out frame of a car with most of its body intact to his left.

Training range. The recognition comes with the sound of a blaring alarm and his point of entrance being shut with heavy metal plate sliding into place. Jack lets the instinct take over and vaults over the nearest obstacle, a low brick wall, and immediately pushes his back against it.

The screen in front of him turns on, showing a chamber not unlike the one he was just in, but this time the chair’s occupant thrashes in the restraints snarling and hissing, more of a senseless animal than human.

“You’re turning out to be more trouble than you’re fucking worth, Morrison.” Gerard enters the frame from the right. “Or should I say, subject seventy-six. So, I was thinking we can run some test, see again how you fare against the newer models.” Jack can feel the anger, the hate, building up on his tongue, bitter seething thing thrashing inside. “Talon’s jewel in the crown, genetically engineered puppet soldiers, mindless cannon fodder, O’Deorain’s framework and Ziegler’s implementation, some fucking bullshit about telepathic command, that’s what you fucking get when you let fucking stupid bitches run things. But you see, turning one into a commander renders it fucking insane, useless, not really useful for a real military situation, but for now, it’s sufficient. Let’s run our little simulation.”

“Boss,” Rutledge’s voice coming from outside of the frame startles him, his fingers turning white on the grip of the pistol, “we had visual on our targets, six klicks away, covering a lot of ground.”

“Good. Finish it up. I don’t want anything on fucking Reaper, Replica or Harbinger getting out of here and linked with Talon. Have a nice die, Morrison,” Gerard snorts, stepping away from the camera. The alarm goes off again.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly combat porn. Introducing Sombra as Paxton and Jesse as Point Man. Jack's dissolution of reality is really fun to write. On the other hand, the most tedious (and secretly entertaining) thing is keeping track of his inventory.

_(…)_

_A man with a grudge and a case_

_A man with intent on his face_

_And if a man walks into place_

_Let it be known I won't hesitate_

_(…)_

The mechanical hiss makes him glance over the makeshift cover – one of the hatches in the ground opens giving way to the rising black matte container – big enough to contain a human, barely. The coffin. That’s how they call it. He can feel the visceral knowledge claw at his insides, the acidic panic, the claustrophobic pressure on his mind.

It stops with a jerk. Jack tightens his grip on the Seegert.

The container opens slowly, agonizingly so, and from the inside stumbles out a masked figure dressed in a strangely familiar uniform yet nondescript enough he cannot place the affiliation. There is an ‘S114’ printed on his left breast in bold white letters. The man almost trips and then straightens, his posture undergoing a complete shift in the split second between the actions.

Jack has his eyes on the rifle held ready in the enemy’s hands, waits for the barrel to swing away from his position as the man scans the room. There is only a slim window for action, growing even smaller with two other hatches activating.

He climbs over the wall in one fluid movement and launches himself at the enemy, sending them both sprawling to the ground, twisting his pistol to the man’s neck and firing several times, lets go of the grip and grasps for the rifle, tears it away from the twitching fingers.

“Enemy sighted.”

Shit. Jack clenches his teeth and ducks behind the coffin offering close to no protection. They will flank him, it’s the basic maneuver. Any movement will put him in the line of fire, and even this cover is fleeting, the whole container shudders when the lid closes, and it starts to sink back underneath the surface of the training range. Inhale.

He dashes to the right, not bothering with blind cover fire, to lean against the concrete partition. Ignoring such risks as negligible is well within the usually calculated simulation parameters. Soldiers like this are expendable. Exhale.

The rifle, Patten – he smirks, lines of it fluid under his touch, not their usual loadout, but he’s familiar with it – should have the full magazine in. Thirty rounds. Good stopping power, moderate armor piercing capability. Bad news if the others are armed with those, still more of a fighting chance for him.

Inhale. Listen. A crunch to the left. Around ten paces back. His hands are wet with sweat. Visualize the height and the posture. Reconstruct the room. A sound of fabric from the right side. Build the replica in your mind. Exhale.

Inhale, prepare, rise up. Hold your breath. Shoot. The man jerks back and breaks in half when the bullets from the short burst impact with his mask. Chips from the concrete brush Jack’s cheek. Duck behind the cover. Exhale.

His heart is thudding in his chest. Close, too close. Again, the whirr of the machinery, two more coffins. He won’t last here long. There is a touch of hysteria to those thoughts, he knows, but knowing is different from managing. His fingers are becoming jittery, spasming on their own without control. The Beast grips his left wrist. Grounds him.

“Remember, Sunshine,” the oily sound coils itself around his mind. Inhale. The magazine should have around twenty-six bullets now. Three targets. Exhale. Accumulate the tension in the muscles. Prepare. The sound of the coffins popping open simultaneously. Inhale.

“Flanking.”

Jack springs out of the cover to the left, keeping low. The sound of the gunfire chases him as he moves in a semicircle. He passes the body on the ground and flings himself behind another partition. The dead soldier lies halfway out of the cover, he grabs his leg and hauls him closer with a strong jerk of his arms. He snags the two grenades, pulls the pin on one, counts down, and throws it over the cover blindly. The other one follows just as the dust brought up by the first explosion flows over the concrete to his side.

“Compromised. Need reinforcements.”

This gives him the time to eject the magazine from the dead man’s rifle. Around fifty-six bullets now. Two targets. Inhale. Jack leans out of the cover. He can see one enemy, crawling on the ground, one leg torn off above the knee, the other just a bloody mess under the ragged fabric. Lucky throw. The second soldier is hidden from his view now.

The man manages to lift his gun with one hand, the other bracing for purchase on the ground. Fuck. Do they even feel pain? Do they even register it? Jack cannot wrap his mind around the concept. Exhale. Shoot. One bullet through the mask. Fifty-five left, rough estimate. He notices three more black shapes in the gaps between the obstacles, at least two of them already open. No time to panic. Need to change position. Four targets now, minimum. Inhale.

He maps out the layout, the explosions still ringing in his ears. Exhale. Move on the outer rim of the range, sprint along the wall, pass the car. Inhale. He moves with the purpose, changing position, in the open…

“Target sighted.”

With the electronic voice comes the impact. It feels like a jackhammer to his side, then a short blackout as he topples down. Desperately, he drags himself forward. Hyperventilating. He rips off the helmet – his head is buzzing, his vision swims – the thing is dented where the bullet hit.

Every breath hurts. The vest held on the chest. His left side is numb and cold. Don’t look. He traces his fingers over the hole, its ridges already wet. He’s going to die here. Jack cranes his neck down.

“Don’t look, Sunshine,” the voice stops him, ghostly fingers rest over his hand. Don’t look. Might stave off the shock. It’s still numb, does not bode well. He’s behind the damned burned out car frame, it offers little protection. He grasps for the dropped rifle. His hand is slick with blood. “Hold your breath.”

He can hear them converging on his position. He’s going to die here.

The screen on the wall, he can see it from here, and there is a movement that catches his eye, a swath of color, purple, violet, pink? The person – woman – stops before the nightmarish chair holding the misshapen twitching human. There is a snap of neon lines in the air and the creature is literally ripped apart into pieces that fall separately around the contraption raining blood.

His lungs begin to burn.

“Exhale,” the Beast orders and Jack does as he is told to do. The next breath comes slowly, unfurls in his chest at the same time the pain in his side slowly comes into focus, stabbing, living. Good. Pain means time.

“My Los Muertos, they dared, they dared to belittle them with… with this!?” The woman’s voice booms over the speakers. Jack pulls himself up a bit, to look back through the window of the frame. No, he won’t question why the soldiers now just stand in place, swaying lightly, like dormant hanging marionettes with no-one to pull their strings. “This fake?”

“Feeling obsolete, bitch?” Another voice, thick with the accent, joins in. His head snaps to the side, searching against reason. McCree.

“Oh. I’ll show you obsolete and shove it up your ass, dear brother. But first,” she turns to the screen, her movements somehow birdlike in how her limbs snap into place viciously, “you killed them, but now you will die because they are with me as they should be.”

“Proceed,” comes from behind before the hail of bullets rips into the car. Jack curls on himself. Bullets perforate the brittle metal, something singes his cheek. Metal shavings bite into his skin. He’s going to die here, there’s too many of them. There is a new side of aggression in their offense. No space to act.

“Do you remember your training, Sunshine?” The Beast whispers insistently, but the training won’t help him now. Only the rifle, almost two magazines. Last stand. Force down the panic. You’re going to die, take them down with you. All soldiers are is lambs led to slaughter. A future banquet for worms. “Remember your training, Sunshine,” the Beast paces restlessly along the old gnarled tree. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not.” Jack feels the calm descend upon him, like a blanket, his breath slowing. His heart stills inside his chest. “You will take me with you when you go, won’t you?”

“It makes it easier, Sunshine,” the Beast smiles with all its fanged mouths, dark tongues lolling out in mirth. Clawed hand cups his bleeding cheek and for a moment Jack looks into crimson eyes. “You are always with me, and I, I am always with you.”

He glances to the side, at the bullet slowly sailing by his head, the air behind it stretching the prismatic luminosity in its wake, metal fragments exploding in points of unexpected brightness. All sounds distort and dampen. Jack inhales even as the wet stringy darkness tugs at the corners of his vision. He stands up with Patten braced against his shoulder.

Six targets total. Two shots per each, accuracy and precision. Watching the impact, the strange whiplash as he hits the targets – their bodies jerked violently with enough force to rip them apart at seams – is strangely satisfying. He feels the passing bullet ruffle his hair.

“This is it, Sunshine, this is how we are together, this is how we were meant to be, always,” the Beast coils between his fingers, nips at his neck, breathes the words into his ear, and he listens. “The hatch on the left,” its voice points out and Jack turns, runs, slides over the gravel and slips into the opening, his back contorting when he hits the lowering coffin. When he tumbles to the cold floor, the time and reality slam back into existence. Jack curls over the rifle, hands clutching at his side, the vicious stabs of pain bringing tears to his eyes. He feels saliva gathering in his mouth in reaction, and whimpers. No. Swallow even if it hurts only to think. He is dehydrated and bleeding. He cannot afford to… “I know, Sunshine,” claws rest on the nape of his neck almost non-threateningly, but the points dig into his skin deep, “you can’t rest here. You have to go.”

Yes. He can’t stay here, there are black coffins stacked on one another along the sides of the corridor, one of them actually being moved along the transportation line above him. It snaps into place below the hatch he used to escape the training range.

Jack moves to his knees, his grasp on the rifle faltering, and small whines of pain making it past the clenched teeth. With difficulty, he heaves himself up, left hand clasped over the bullet hole, and unsteadily follows forward. Each step burns. His breath shortens.

“You… you will take me with you… won’t you?” The darkness creeps into his vision as his right leg almost sinks under him. He manages to stabilize himself, leaning on the wall.

“I am always with you,” the Beast whispers back when he sinks into the grass, into the smell of a warm sunny afternoon – the richness of the green and the earth soothing in their onslaught. Lips pressed against his back, just below his neck; a thumb lazily rubbing circles into his arm; their legs tangled together.

Something skitters on his palm and Jack flicks it off absentmindedly.

“Have you ever thought about later?”

“You’d miss it.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Too broken and too intertwined to ever find another way, yet here, in this place, at this time, perfect and content, wrapped in each other, breathing in and out in symmetry to the music of the buzzing insects. Jack closes his eyes.

“Turn around.” The voice, it’s wrong, doesn’t belong here – wherever and whenever here is – sends shivers of cold down his spine. Nails sink into the skin of his arm. “Turn around.”

“…no,” he answers, the word breaking in half on the hitch of a breath.

“Remember your…”

“No, please, don’t make me do this, don’t take this from me,” Jack pleads with the inevitable. His fingers dig into the dirt, into the clumps of roots below, into things slithering under the surface. Cold hands close around his throat.

“This does not belong to you,” his doppelganger snarls at him spitting blood. “It never did! It never will!”

No, this is not his, and when the pressure lessens he opens his eyes to artificial light and the smell of cordite and ozone in the air along with the stink of burning plastic and circuitry, and something else he cannot place due to the strange haze that makes his fingertips tingle. Railing, he’s leaning against the railing, on a slightly raised platform over the rest of the chamber, and to the left, there is a half empty IV bag hanging, hooked to the metallic balustrade, the needle feeding its contents into his arm. By his side lies an emptied field kit, bandages and tape strewn around, some stained with blood.

Jack clenches his hand and starts. Morphine syringe. Used.

His vest is open. He lets go of the syringe and cautiously feels around the wound. It’s dressed. The touch makes him inhale sharply in pain. Past the threshold. Movement is going to be troublesome. Slowly, hissing under his breath and bracing against the railing, Jack stands up. The strange alien tug inside his stomach… the bullet is still in.

Now he can see the bodies below and still-smoking remnants of a powered armor.

“Do you understand now, Sunshine?” The Beast purrs snugly pressed against his chest. “Together, we are unstoppable. We will bring about the end.”

His hand hovers for a moment over the blinking console. No other time than now. He touches the prompt and looks up when he hears the grind of machinery. The enormous hatch in the ceiling opens raining dust and the platform starts, then laboriously moves upwards.

He can hear the feedback from his comm unit grow stronger.

“I’ll just find…” Lena. She stutters. “Jack!? That bloody you?”

“Yes. I think so.” He can’t keep the weary smile out of his voice.

“Bloody hell, you daft bugger, I was getting bloody worried…!”

“Lena.” It’s Winston, still calm and composed. “If anyone was going to get out of there on their own it was Morrison.”

“Bloody fucking right, Papa Winston.” Jack can hear the gears in her head turning. “I managed to hail Bunny, she’s working on bringing the meat wagon around but it’s the bloody apocalypse out there and traffic is killer. GPS is dead as fuck, but I dare say you’ll find the bloody stadium, right?”

“We will tear, we will rend, we will feast, together,” the Beast chortles, its maw pushing against his cheek in a needy way, and his hand pets it eliciting little whines of contentment. “Nothing will stand in our way.”

“Yes,” Jack confirms.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a literary reference, quite obscure. Also, more or less, setting the tone for the bombed out city, and the interactions. Believe it or not, but this is the time and place where the real fun begins.

(…)

_He was down on the floor with his lips to a glass_

_Said he dreamed of a future that won't come to pass_

_That he once strived to excel in a world so vast_

_But why run a race when it's rig and he's fixed in last_

(…)

 

“What even was that place?” Winston asks, his voice betraying his uneasiness, and Jack has to wonder how much had he seen of the site itself to shake him up enough to drop his go-to mission persona even for a moment. “There was nothing in any reports that a facility of this kind was located in Ilium, and I don’t like not knowing.”

“Talon blacksite. Probably for their Replica project,” Jack grabs the rifle and with a wince shoulders it. The platform is still slowly climbing. “I don’t think…”

“Wrong. The whole facility has been devoted to Harbinger,” Shrike unceremoniously invades their communications. Lena mutters something in the background, most likely stopping Winston from saying anything. “Creating so-called commanders and Reaper containment failsafe. The procedure all three of you underwent was to attune you to Reaper’s telesthetic footprint but Sergeant Morrison can probably attest to how well it went,” she continues, the sarcasm dripping even from the electronically modulated voice, “since he managed to synchronize with it.”

“Oh, it went very well, didn’t it, Sunshine?” The Beast’s chuckle resonates in his throat.

“Nevertheless, Lacroix thinks she can control it, and she is mistaken. It can’t be controlled, not once had they managed it during the nine years they had it sealed. One cannot claim control of a force of nature.”

Nine years. Sealed in darkness. Alone. A different kind of dread is what Jack feels when the elevator stops, the memory of someone howling in the darkness beyond the frosted glass door – the pain and the anguish forced into each and every of the animalistic sounds uttered – it still evokes a sympathetic response and threatens to cut away his breath with how his throat constricts.

He has no will left to argue with Shrike as something suffocating settles on his shoulders. White light. White room. Nothing changes. The clock is broken, it ticks but the hands do not move.

“Breathe,” the Beast’s whisper forces itself into his ear and he shakily lets the air into his lungs. With the way Lena’s voice has a note of concern to it he realizes he must have made some sort of noise to alert her.

“Jack, you right there?”

“Caught a bullet to the side, made do with a field kit. I’ll manage,” Jack winces pulling the needle out of his arm. A small drop of blood forms over the puncture site.

“Bloody hell, Jack, luv,” Lena lets out a frustrated sigh, “try to pin your position and we will try to get you…”

“This is no time to…”

“Shut it, Papa,” she sharply cuts Winston off. “We’re not bloody leaving him.” She had seen his files. She should know better. She should get as far away from him as possible.

“Good. Because now your best chance of survival and succeeding in destroying Reaper is in you all keeping together and making it to Still Island. I’ll contact you again if the need arises,” Shrike finishes.

“I’ll manage it to the stadium, Lena, worry about yourself and Winston,” Jack, turning around, inspects the area for the first time; the dilapidated warehouse is seemingly abandoned – the broken wooden crates stand alone by the walls, some of them even touched by rot and mold. A good cover for a hidden entrance, especially if it makes an impression something illicit of a mundane sort is being conducted in here.

“Feck off, you old sod, because when I get my hands on ya bloody arse…”

If Lena has any other choice words to add, they all drown in the rising static followed by a wave of something washing over him with an inaudible pop accompanied by a monstrous giggle the Beast lets out, its bulk vibrating against his side. Every surface emits sickly red glow with intensity increasing over the edges.

“You hear it, Sunshine, don’t you?” The buzzing in his communicator is voices garbled beyond recognition, incessant and changing in pitch ever so often. Jack glances at the Beast keeping to his side, his fingers idly buried in its viscous substance. He – no, they – have to hurry. There is an invisible clock ticking away in a white room. He approaches the rusted staircase and slowly starts to climb up, left palm instinctively flying to his side to brace against the pain in a furtive gesture, but the external pressure on the wound still somehow alleviates the tug and tear inside.

“I do,” Jack stops at the top to catch his breath. The roof of the warehouse is covered with corrugated sheets, some of them askew, some missing. The sky, it looks like a dawn is breaking, the light tinted with the same shade of red as everything else.

“He is calling for him but they all hear it, just as you do,” the woman with the tattoo under her eye lays a hand on his shoulder. The warmth of her touch helps to push the pain to the back of his awareness and lock it away where it does not bother him so much. “You need to be careful, rafeeq,” she whispers when the receding tide washes over them again and she melts away into black ash floating away on the air currents.

Jack moves towards the metal walkway and finally catches a glimpse of a car stuck in the wall, crashed in from the outside. The headlights are still working and flickering on and off but what stirs his attention is a skeleton half-thrust through the windshield as if it were driving the vehicle at the very moment it was thrown at the building. The sight is bizarre, maybe even more than anything he had witnessed inside the facility. Jack raises the rifle and advances, foot after foot.

Overhead, there is an incoming sound of a roar, of a burning engine, and as he snaps his head up he sees the sleek shape of a plane moving across the sky, the right jet trailing flames and smoke behind, fire licking alongside the surface of the wing. A liner. It shouldn’t be here, not after all this time. He had seen some of the coverage in the facility.

It is flying too low. Descending too rapidly. Wobbling from right to left. The pilot won’t be able to pull it up, and if he does try, he will break the plane in half. At this speed, when it touches down, no-one will survive, not in the urban environment, and the fuel...

The engine blast from the craft blows the rest of metal sheets off the roof and in seconds the shape disappears from his view only to be soon followed by torturous sounds of a crash and then, an explosion. The whole frame of the warehouse vibrates, and the car jostles forward dangerously but stays suspended. The headlights switch off after two another flashes.

Jack clenches his teeth and follows the walkway to the door on the left. He can’t dwell on it now because the clock is ticking. The hands don’t move. It measures the time that does not pass.

Inside the small darkened room his overhead display starts to act up and he holds his finger on the trigger. Nothing. It passes. Yet the feeling of a presence – of something other with him in that room – stays as he forces the door open and descends to the ground floor. The air grows colder and he can swear he sees his own breath coming out in white puffs.

“Come out, come out,” the Beast intones while curling around his legs. Prints made out of black grease mark its dance on the ground.

“Whoever you are,” Jack finishes for it, eyes searching. “Come out, come out…”

“Wherever you are,” the dark laughter runs down his back in peals and ripples in his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack notices a movement and turns shooting. Bullets pierce the air and embed in the wall. “They do leave such a foul aftertaste, Sunshine.”

The door to his right creaks and then tilts back, finally falling off the hinges into the world outside. The nagging feeling of not being alone passes far too slowly to be comforting.

“The ghosts, or the living?” Jack asks himself, eyes trained on the exit, and the alleyway he sees beyond the doorframe.

“Is there a difference, Sunshine?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“No. No, you wouldn’t,” with a somber note the Beast returns to him. Past the threshold the asphalt of the street is ripped up, he can see where the water pipes running below it exploded when the pressure of boiling water tore through them. The fact he’s probably dying of a radiation poisoning is an afterthought.

The rubble is everywhere and there is no intact window in sight. The burnt out frame of a bus stands half-crushed under the pile of concrete.

The unnatural quiet is what unnerves him, the overwhelming silence punctuated only by the crackling of the fires. Jack cautiously eyes the dead end where a side of a building collapsed and, after a short pause, sidles to the opposite wall and glances past the corner.

He pulls the trigger before his other senses catch up with the instinct guiding his hands; the grey figure – frozen in motion while running with hands raised above their head – explodes into ash gently whirling in the air until it slowly settles into a pile on the cracked asphalt.

The facility. The numerous piles of ash inside. The screaming woman that shriveled and splintered, and then crumpled into ash. Reaper will consume until he consumes all. The apocalypse. The end of the world.

Down the street there are two more ash silhouettes, one on all fours, the other standing – twisted to the side, lunging away, trying to hide, escape? It is the futility of the action that gets to him, for one cannot outrun their death.

With a thundering heart, Jack moves closer – the rifle heavier with each step he takes, claws biting into his shoulders in apprehension – his eyes never leave the figures. He licks his lips, unprepared for the sudden howl pushing another unseen tide of force tinting everything with a brownish sort of red.

The shapes made out of ash change and stir, grey transforming into flesh, cracked and sickly. The one on the ground, a woman, screaming, crawling, the skin on her exposed arms and legs bubbling and melting off, smearing wet splotches on the asphalt with each uncoordinated jerk of her body. Chunks of meat fall off her frame.

The standing one, a man, tumbling, hands outstretched – fingertips ending in dark charcoal, his face is seared into unreadable expression, lips charred and blackened, eyes oozing out of their sockets and down his cheeks like ghastly milky tears.

His communicator is screeching at him, the cacophony dizzying, and now he knows with a certainty raising bile in his throat those are voices of all suspended between life and death in the agony of their final moments here, a residue of some sort, a fleeting memory of being clinging to the crumbling reality.

“Not much more than you,” the scornful laugh comes from the doppelganger standing on top of the pile of rubble behind the tortured twitching shapes, his silhouette embraced by embers circling around him. The wraith weighs the knife in his hand, then throws it up to catch it effortlessly when it falls. “You are the same as they are, blind and stumbling, trying to grasp at something that’s not yours. Do you think he cares about you any more than he does for all the others?” He points the blade at him in his outstretched hand. “He has so many to choose from but in the end, I will make him see me, only me, and you, you will be devoured like all the rest.”

“I don’t mind,” Jack lowers the rifle, the barrel pointing towards the ground, and he smiles at the bloody apparition sneering at him over the nightmarish landscape. “As long as he needs me.”

“He doesn’t. He never will. Not you.”

The wave comes back and the pale-faced wraith fades along with the writhing screaming shapes that again solidify into bodies of ash as the change spills over them, and the myriad of voices in his comm quiets down.

“Not me,” Jack swallows back the bitter admission.

“Not yet, Sunshine,” the Beast whispers.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was heavily cut and rewritten. Is now dubbed ‘50 Shades of Rubble (And A Darker Shade of A Crashed Plane)’ - even if we don't get to the plane proper. I decided to go for much-needed exposition. Also, introducing Enhanced Powered Armor known as ‘walker’. I might be also dangerously close to writing monster porn when you take some passages out of the context.

_(…)_

_Then he mused all of life is a joke and he laughed_

_That it is what it is and he's thankful for all that he has_

_I said well let me just pose one question and ask_

_If you just want what you have, then why are you sad_

_(…)_

 

 

Jack moves slowly through the post-apocalyptic remains of the city weaving in and out of the ruined buildings where streets are blocked – the offhand descriptor has lost its sarcastic luster when the actual apocalypse had already happened on top of the nuclear detonation. The radio stays silent except for the moments the call flows over the area blanketing the surfaces with sickly rust. The smell of burning fuel and artificial materials comes and goes with the wind.

He is half of a mind to rip the communicator from his ear now that he knows what comes with each wave, the only thing stopping him is the hope of hearing Lena again, or maybe Shrike, even if his own attempts to hail either of them were so far met with uncaring static.

He stops at a windowsill and climbs inside to avoid the rubble of a half-collapsed elevation in front, biting his lip when his side protests with a numb feeling of an alien object moving inside. He still should have two hours on the morphine, give or take some, and he is either going to be in an agonal state at that point, or he should try to secure another dose in the meantime. If it’s going to be the first one, he still has got a lot of ground to cover between here and the stadium, then to Still Island.

Jack blinks, his eyes adapting to the gloom inside. A convenience store, the shelves knocked over and their contents spilled, but there is a row of almost intact refrigerators to the side and before he catches himself in a few strides he crosses the distance, hand almost ripping off the door, searching frantically.

He has the juice bottle uncapped and halfway to his lips when he freezes. If his intestines are damaged by the bullet, he is only taking the time away from himself, he should not be drinking or eating anything. Jack licks his lips, his throat parched, hand slightly trembling when he looks at the contents of the plastic bottle spilling over the rim under his grip. The Beast purrs and pushes its maw into his wounded side, feels almost like a dog affectionately lapping around the field dressing.

“Oh, Sunshine, you do need it,” it nips at his skin with razor-sharp fangs, nudging him into action as his left hand falls down to ground himself in its undulating substance, fingers sinking into it in need of purchase as he feels it trickling down over his skin.

“If there’s a tear…”

“It won’t matter. Drink, Sunshine,” the last part is a hissed order, and he obeys, gulps down greedily, the escaped juice dribbling down his chin. In seconds, the bottle is thrown to the ground as he starts on another one. “Good.”

The relief is all but godly, the cheap off-brand juice is sweeter than anything he had ever had. Jack looks around and grabs one of the packaged sandwiches lying just next to the bottles on the shelf, tears the wrapping away not bothering to even glance at the label what the contents are. The bread is still considerably fresh, the cheap margarine had never tasted that good, enough so that he lets out a satisfied chuckle. He finishes it, taking big gulps of the juice in between ravenous bites.

“Good,” Jack repeats, slowly setting the empty bottle on the counter. His skin itches, his fingertips tingle, a familiar sensation, same as undefined vertigo, and he idly wonders what had taken it so long to manifest. “Nothing was ever good, was it?”

“We are good together, Sunshine, always were,” the purr reverberates in his chest. The Beast climbs up on its hind haunches, grips his shoulders with claws, and he lets it nose at his neck, even welcomes it. His hand travels down the fluctuating ridges of its spine, the touch leaves crimson afterimages behind, cruel eyes chaotically wriggling around sprout out in its wake. “Even apart, we always are. Always,” the long coarse tongue licks up his cheek leaving a trail of something wet, “and never apart.”

“Never apart,” Jack whispers, his head lolling to the side, eyes half-closed. “But you left me.”

“Did I? Or were you taken from me, Sunshine?” The purr is undercut with a possessive rumble. “Did you not hide from me, Sunshine?”

“Why would I?” Jack brings his hands up to embrace its bulk, to draw it closer, resting his forehead against where its shoulder should be.

“Such a dutiful little soldier, always, the doctors say jump, and so he does.”

“The pills,” Jack locks his arms tighter at the mention, yet the jitteriness is not there, not at the moment. Morphine high. His breath is shallow.

“The pills,” the Beast’s maw locks around his neck, the sharp teeth sink into his flesh, and he gasps at the pressure and the intrusion into skin and muscle below, feels the burning blood gushing over his skin even when darkness slips through his fingers and he is left alone in a white room.

All the surfaces are immaculate and evenly lit, there are no cracks nor seams, no entrance nor exit. A clock hangs from one of the walls, round, with a white rim. Steady ticking creeps in around the edge of his hearing but the hands are stuck and immobile – the mechanism not even straining against the obstruction. He has no shadow.

“…accumulation of the protein in the subject’s prefrontal cortex…” A woman’s voice comes with a stab behind his eyes, he scrambles for a purchase, finds it, a metal chair screwed into the floor, not in the center of the room, just a bit off to the side. “…comparable, it remains dormant…”

There is a tickling sensation crawling up his face, up to his temple, wetness spreading throughout his hair, he glances after it – the droplets of blood from his torn throat dripping upwards against the gravity – to the ceiling where they gather in a growing puddle.

“…therapy accelerated…” The stain keeps spreading, inching towards the walls, and then spilling over them. The clock, even covered in transparent red, keeps on ticking. With each turn, the sound grows louder, thunderous. Ominous. Time is an enemy of its own kind. “…unsuccessful in activating the transmitter…”

The blood reaches the floor and there it starts rising. Jack starts, wants to climb the chair to avoid the liquid but stops because it has suddenly gained an inhabitant. A limp form of one of the failed commanders, slumped forward, kept in by the heavy restraints, a wretched starved creature with abundant traces of abuse, self-inflicted and not.

“…synchronization rate nearing one hundred percent…”

The blood is up to his knees when the creature surges and strains, screams garbled sounds in no way similar to what a human voice should articulate, at least not without a significant damage to the vocal chords.

“…the transmitter gene offsets the…”

Numerous hands emerge from the red sludge, take hold of him, crawl upwards over the fabric leaving ghastly red smears – some of them longer than humanly possible – and tug and pull him down, under, until there is only darkness locked between his arms.

“The room, what happens in the room?” Jack whispers into it and the Beast stirs in his embrace with a satisfied growl.

“This is for you, Sunshine, to find out,” the Beast slinks over his shoulder, down his arm, its intimidating form fizzing to nothing and then reappearing by the door in the back behind the counter, and Jack shakes his head, spares a thoughtful glance towards the refrigerators. One bottle. He takes it and slips into the pocket on his thigh. “Now come, Sunshine, our old friends are waiting.”

“I know of them. Do I know them?” There is a touch of hyperawareness and fluidity to his senses now, his thoughts jump from subject to subject. Sensory overload. He follows the Beast, the door needs a bit of force to open, a metal shelf tilts back and crashes on the other side when he pushes on it. “And the room, the clock?”

The Beast only laughs looking back at him, its maw beckoning, the tongue flicking in and out.

“And Shrike, why is she here? Why is a sniper with over six hundred confirmed kills here with her own agenda?” Jack maneuvers between the scattered furnishings. Outside, the back alley is almost clear, the slow grating noise comes from a swaying signboard.

“The guilt is a great motivator, Sunshine,” the Beast returns under his hand, bumps his fingers deliberately. Absentmindedly, he pets it while moving forward.

“Why would she?”

“Why would you, Sunshine?”

“I survived,” an obvious answer, and he thanks for his compromised state that lets him freely admit a part of this twisted thing eating him up not even from the inside. A wretched void that is him in its entirety. An empty space filled up by a dreadful static.

“Now, Sunshine,” the Beast rumbles, the vibrations carry up his arm, “who were those that you had outlived?”

“I know their names, their faces… But I don’t remember them. Todd James, Mina Tamaro, Gavriell Krauss,” Jack swallows past the tightness of his throat, the litany of names continuing, “Loke Stilo, Argider Miles, Bill Poletti, John Ashworth. We all came in but the only one out is me,” he ducks into another doorframe when the concrete and rebar peek around the corner, feels safer in the more confined space – protected from the direct line of sight. Feels safer from the wafting smell of oily smoke.

For a brief moment the tree and the grass flicker at the end of the corridor, just within arm’s reach.

“They all came in, they did, and we ripped them apart, Sunshine, we did,” the Beast murmurs deliberately. “You have their blood on your hands, Sunshine.”

“I survived,” Jack repeats climbing slowly up the stairs. The ceiling is caved in and on top of the ruble, between the tiles and beams, lies a part of a landing gear – the tire almost intact, the frame bent – but the make and part number are still discernible. Civilian purpose. Might be the liner he saw come down earlier. This means he has covered probably around five klicks in urban terrain judging by the suspected moment of the impact, the plane must have clipped something on the way and ripped the wheel off. Good time so far.

“Yes, Sunshine, you survived. You killed them all when they turned on you, each and every one of them. We feasted that day,” the hiss haunts him, “didn’t we, Sunshine?”

“I survived,” this time the words are barely audible and he blinks, wipes at the unexpected wetness on his face. “That’s all I could’ve…” Jack slowly leans on the wall and slips down to the floor. Even with the chill in the air, he feels like he is slowly burning to ash. “I survived.”

“We survived, Sunshine, and they are dead, this is all that counts,” the Beast sinks its claws into plaster above his head, the dust drifts down to settle down on his hair and shoulders. “And so will die everybody else.”

With a tremor, more dirt falls. Another one comes with a crunch from the outside, closer yet.

“Everybody else?” His voice wavers with the question as he glances out the window. Something moves there, at the level of his line of sight, each stomp shaking up the whole structure.

“Anyone who dared to lay their hands on you, Sunshine,” the Beast nuzzles the dip of his neck. Jack holds his breath, trembling hands gripping the rifle. A walker. A goddamn walker on the streets. He could manage against a powered armor but not a walker. The thing is almost four meters high, heavily armored and equipped with kinetic shields, dual high-caliber rotary guns, and mounted rocket launchers. To take one head on would be a suicide. When had they moved on from the prototype phase?

The walker slowly lumbers past his position, and only then Jack lets the air out of his lungs and rubs the tears off his cheeks. The Beast thumps its forehead against his own and he stares into its macabre crimson eyes.

“We survive, Sunshine, that’s what we do. We will never be lambs meekly led to slaughter, no, Sunshine, we are death, we are strife, where we go only ashes and charred bones remain, for we are perfect together.” It sounds like a promise and a threat at the same time. Jack chuckles.

“Only ashes and charred bones.”


End file.
